Sarah Paine Warns Unlimited War Aims Push Adversaries to Death Ground

Dwarkesh Patel

Wars become impossible to terminate when invading powers escalate limited goals into regime change, triggering existential resistance and hostile third-party intervention.

AI-assisted summary of Sarah Paine — Why wars are so difficult to end — original source. Check the original for full context.

Source published: 2026-09-29

Key ideas

Wars are inherently difficult to terminate because military momentum often outruns political objectives, turning limited interventions into open-ended commitments or provoking hostile third-party interventions. (0:03)
Meiji Japan successfully defeated Imperial Russia in 1904–1905 despite staggering demographic and industrial deficits by strictly bounding its political aims, arranging US mediation before hostilities peaked, and seizing Sakhalin Island as a final bargaining chip. (20:05)
Pursuing unlimited objectives such as regime change forces an adversary onto Sun Tzu's 'death ground,' triggering fanatical resistance because surrender means total annihilation. (34:48)
The 1991 Gulf War achieved decisive termination by restricting aims to Kuwait's liberation under National Security Directive 54 and securing over $50 billion in allied burden-sharing, contrasting sharply with the 2003 invasion's destabilization of an ethnically fractured mosaic society. (26:54)

Detailed notes

## Background Published on YouTube by Dwarkesh Patel on September 25, 2026, this presentation serves as the concluding lecture in his video series with historian Sarah Paine. According to the page description, Paine addresses war termination—why wars are simple to start but notoriously difficult to conclude on intended terms—using the Russo-Japanese War and other conflicts to explain how regional disputes spiral into global wars or disintegrate into endless insurgencies.

## TL;DR Sarah Paine examines why exiting military conflicts is historically fraught, arguing that military victory is meaningless unless strictly tethered to achievable political objectives. Anchoring her analysis in the Russo-Japanese War and the 1991 Gulf War, she illustrates how disciplined adherence to limited aims, pre-planned diplomatic off-ramps, and recognizing Clausewitz’s culminating point of victory prevent catastrophic overreach. By contrast, expanding into unlimited objectives—such as Douglas MacArthur's push to the Yalu in Korea or the 2003 invasion of Iraq—places adversaries on Sun Tzu's 'death ground,' provoking outside power intervention or unleashing unwinnable insurgencies in fragmented mosaic societies. Ultimately, Paine provides a strategic diagnostic matrix that weighs political war aims, asymmetries of political will, and porous geographic borders before committing to conflict.

## Atmosphere & style The presentation carries the brisk, intellectual authority of an elite war college seminar, animated by Paine's razor-sharp delivery, pragmatic realism, and dry wit. She cuts through conventional military romanticism with striking historical metaphors—from the fragile shatter of a Bologna flask to the burden of inheriting a 'loaded diaper' in nation-building. The experience feels intensely pedagogical yet urgent, systematically translating centuries of military theory into a cautionary diagnostic framework for modern statecraft.

## Bulletin - [00:03](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6cjAEr08qk&t=3s) Wars are inherently difficult to terminate because military momentum often outruns political objectives, turning limited interventions into open-ended commitments or provoking hostile third-party interventions. - [20:05](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6cjAEr08qk&t=1205s) Meiji Japan successfully defeated Imperial Russia in 1904–1905 despite staggering demographic and industrial deficits by strictly bounding its political aims, arranging US mediation before hostilities peaked, and seizing Sakhalin Island as a final bargaining chip. - [34:48](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6cjAEr08qk&t=2088s) Pursuing unlimited objectives such as regime change forces an adversary onto Sun Tzu's 'death ground,' triggering fanatical resistance because surrender means total annihilation. - [26:54](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6cjAEr08qk&t=1614s) The 1991 Gulf War achieved decisive termination by restricting aims to Kuwait's liberation under National Security Directive 54 and securing over $50 billion in allied burden-sharing, contrasting sharply with the 2003 invasion's destabilization of an ethnically fractured mosaic society.

## Key takeaways - [00:03](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6cjAEr08qk&t=3s) Ending a war on favorable terms is far more challenging than initiating one because political aims tend to shift and expand once military operations begin. - [06:18](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6cjAEr08qk&t=378s) Victory in warfare is determined solely by the fulfillment of political objectives rather than tactical battlefield success or lopsided casualty ratios. - [08:19](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6cjAEr08qk&t=499s) Clausewitz's culminating point of victory marks the strategic boundary where further offensive success produces diminishing returns and invites devastating counter-blows or foreign intervention. - [17:23](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6cjAEr08qk&t=1043s) Autocratic adversaries often behave like Clausewitz's 'Bologna flask,' showing no outward signs of distress until a critical micro-crack triggers abrupt, catastrophic collapse. - [20:05](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6cjAEr08qk&t=1205s) Japan averted exhaustion in the Russo-Japanese War by establishing an American exit ramp prior to the conflict, using diplomatic channels to broker mediation immediately after the Battle of Mukden. - [24:14](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6cjAEr08qk&t=1454s) The seizure of Sakhalin Island served as the indispensable psychological lever that broke Tsar Nicholas II's resolve by threatening sovereign Russian imperial territory. - [26:54](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6cjAEr08qk&t=1614s) The 1991 Gulf War serves as an operational model of limited warfare, strictly adhering to finite political goals and achieving full allied financial burden-sharing. - [32:09](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6cjAEr08qk&t=1929s) The distinction between limited and unlimited warfare is governed by the scope of political objectives—negotiated concessions versus regime change—rather than the volume of firepower applied. - [30:28](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6cjAEr08qk&t=1828s) External patrons ('big buddies') with contiguous, un-interdictable supply lines render localized wars nearly impossible to conclude through conventional force alone. - [34:48](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6cjAEr08qk&t=2088s) Imposing unlimited demands places the enemy on 'death ground,' generating an asymmetric resolve to resist that conventional invaders consistently underestimate. - [41:16](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6cjAEr08qk&t=2476s) World War I escalated into an uncontrollable global conflagration because the belligerents harbored parallel, mutually exclusive war aims that precluded compromise. - [46:38](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6cjAEr08qk&t=2798s) Insurgencies deny conventional victory through an asymmetry in the 'value of the object,' where indigenous fighters defend existential survival against expeditionary forces with discretionary political will. - [48:58](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6cjAEr08qk&t=2938s) Toppling central authorities in 'mosaic societies' characterized by deep sectarian divisions and porous borders almost inevitably sparks protracted civil war rather than liberal democracy. - [51:06](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6cjAEr08qk&t=3066s) Before entering any war, strategists must rigorously evaluate adversary war aims, the asymmetric value of the object, and physical transit corridors that enable external sanctuary.

## Detailed walkthrough ### [00:03](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6cjAEr08qk&t=3s) The Dilemma of War Termination and the Russo-Japanese Model

Ending a war is notoriously difficult. As Sarah Paine observes, "It's really easy to get into wars. It's awfully difficult to get out of them. And it is even more difficult to get out of them what you wished you could have gotten out of them." From the Japanese perspective, the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905) represents a model case of war termination. On paper, Russia dwarfed Japan across virtually every quantifiable metric: territorial expanse, population, industrial base, natural resource endowment, army size, and naval tonnage. Yet Japan managed to defeat this far larger adversary and exit the war having secured its strategic aims.

```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: Regional War Outcomes and Pathologies accDescr: Flowchart contrasting successful war termination with two strategic failure modes.

subgraph Core["Regional Conflict"] A["Regional War"] --> B{"Strategic Path"} end

Paine outlines a framework for examining regional wars and highlights two major strategic pathologies that can ruin war termination: - **Escalation into global war:** A regional conflict can ignite wider systemic fighting—a danger intensely feared in the modern Russia-Ukraine war. - **Protracted insurgency (Victory Denial):** Even after suffering conventional defeat, an opponent may refuse to surrender and resort to an insurgency. This asymmetric strategy denies the victor the fruits of success, imposing massive long-term costs on the occupier while demanding immense suffering from the insurgent population.

To analyze these outcomes, Paine draws heavily on classical military theory, notably Carl von Clausewitz's concepts of the "culminating point of attack," the "culminating point of victory," the metaphor of the blown flask, decisive battles, and limited versus unlimited objectives, along with Sun Tzu's concept of "death ground."

---

[02:25](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6cjAEr08qk&t=145s) The Clashing Empires in Manchuria and the Siege of Port Arthur

The geopolitical collision between Imperial Russia and Meiji Japan centered on Northeast Asia, specifically Chinese Manchuria and the Korean Peninsula. Russia had constructed an extensive railway concession through Chinese territory, running south from Harbin down to Port Arthur. Unlike Vladivostok, which froze over for several months each year, Port Arthur provided Russia with a coveted year-round, ice-free naval base. When the Boxer Rebellion—described by Paine as "the al-Qaeda of their day"—swept through China targeting Western imperialists, the Boxers tore up Russian railway lines. Russia deployed substantial troop contingents to protect its investments, but refused to withdraw once the uprising was quelled.

```mermaid flowchart LR accTitle: Japanese Dilemma at Port Arthur accDescr: Diagram illustrating how Japanese sea lines of communication required neutralizing the Russian fleet at Port Arthur.

subgraph SeaLane["Supply Vulnerability"] SLOC["Japanese SLOCs (Troops & Supplies)"] Fleet["Russian Fleet at Port Arthur"] Fleet -.->|"Threatens"| SLOC end

subgraph LandOps["Operational Bottleneck"] Siege["Siege of Port Arthur (General Nogi's Army)"] Field["Main Northern Campaign (Harbin Direction)"] Siege -.->|"Ties down 1 of 4 Japanese Armies"| Field end ```

Japan attempted diplomatic compromise, proposing a mutual recognition of spheres of influence: Russian dominance in Manchuria in exchange for Japanese primacy in Korea. The Tsarist regime dismissed the offer, procrastinating in the belief that Russia could take both regions without taking Japan seriously. Facing a closing strategic window, Japan launched a surprise preemptive attack on Port Arthur to neutralize the Russian Pacific Squadron.

Because Japan’s war effort depended entirely on vulnerable sea lines of communication across the Tsushima Strait and the Yellow Sea, the Russian fleet had to be destroyed or bottled up. This forced Japan to invest Port Arthur by land, tying down one of its four field armies under General Nogi Maresuke. Desperate to free this force for the main advance north toward Harbin, Nogi launched four costly frontal assaults against fortified Russian positions, suffering staggering casualties. The deadlock was only broken after Japanese forces captured the high ground at 203 Meter Hill, allowing artillery spotters to direct heavy 28-centimeter siege howitzers onto the Russian warships trapped in the harbor below. Meanwhile, Tsar Nicholas II dispatched the Baltic Fleet on a grueling journey around Africa and through the Suez Canal to relieve Port Arthur, only for the fortress to fall before they arrived and the Russian fleet to be annihilated at the Battle of Tsushima.

---

[06:18](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6cjAEr08qk&t=378s) Limited Objectives and the Catastrophic Opportunity Costs for Russia

The Russo-Japanese War was fundamentally a limited war because both belligerents fought for bounded political objectives rather than absolute regime change. Japan never intended to march on St. Petersburg to overthrow the Romanovs. Although Tsar Nicholas II initially harbored grandiose visions of invading the Japanese home islands and replacing the Meiji government, he quickly discovered this was militarily impossible and reduced his goal to expelling Japanese forces from Manchuria.

Evaluating whether a war is won or lost depends strictly on whether a state achieves its political war aims, not on tallying tactical victories on the battlefield. Paine notes that the United States won nearly all conventional battles in Vietnam, yet the conflict is recorded as a defeat. By contrast, Japan attained and exceeded its initial war aims: - Expelled Russian influence from Korea entirely. - Acquired the southern branch of the Russian rail concessions in Manchuria (the South Manchuria Railway). - Gained control of the strategic naval base at Port Arthur and the Liaodong Peninsula.

For Russia, the war was an unmitigated disaster compounded by crippling opportunity costs. The vast capital poured into Far Eastern adventures could have modernized European Russia's rail infrastructure. That logistical deficiency proved fatal during World War I, causing urban food distribution to collapse and sparking the 1917 food riots in Petrograd that ended three centuries of Romanov rule and culminated in Nicholas II and his family being executed in a Siberian basement.

---

[08:19](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6cjAEr08qk&t=499s) Clausewitz's Culminating Points of Attack and Victory

To understand the mechanics of war termination, Paine unpacks the Clausewitzian paired concepts of the *culminating point of attack* and the *culminating point of victory*. Clausewitz observed that offensive operations inevitably consume energy, resources, and combat power. Most attacks can only progress until the attacker's remaining strength is just sufficient to hold ground defensively and negotiate peace.

```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: Spectrum of the Culminating Point accDescr: Flowchart showing the risks of stopping short versus overshooting the culminating point.

subgraph Spectrum["Offensive Progression"] A["Undershooting Culmination"] -->|"Leaves potential gains unexploited"| B["Sub-optimal Peace"] C["Culminating Point (Peak Relative Advantage)"] -->|"Optimal Point to Settle"| D["Model War Termination"] E["Overshooting Culmination"] -->|"Assumes excessive risk & weakness"| F["Disproportionate Backlash / Defeat"] end ```

The distinction between the two levels centers on operational versus strategic scale: - **Culminating Point of Attack (Operational):** Applies to an individual engagement or a campaign sequence (e.g., destroying the naval garrison inside Port Arthur). Pushing past this operational limit exposes an overextended attacker to a counter-reaction that is often far more forceful than the initial offensive blow. - **Culminating Point of Victory (Strategic):** Pertains to the war as an entire political undertaking (e.g., forcing Russia out of Manchuria).

Failing to advance to the culminating point leaves achievable objectives unfulfilled at acceptable costs. Conversely, pushing beyond it causes costs and risks to drastically outstrip any potential benefits, leaving the attacker structurally weakened. Paine emphasizes that one of the clearest external indicators that a power has overshot its culminating point of victory is third-party military intervention, which abruptly tilts the geopolitical balance.

[10:03](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6cjAEr08qk&t=603s) The Culminating Point of Attack at Port Arthur: 203 Meter Hill

The Siege of Port Arthur, the conflict that initiated the Russo-Japanese War and dragged on for nearly a full year, culminated in the utter destruction of Russia's Pacific fleet in theater. To achieve this, General Nogi Maresuke launched desperate, grinding frontal assault after frontal assault against the fortified perimeter. These brute-force charges proved catastrophic in blood: Nogi lost approximately 45,000 men—an entire Japanese army wiped out in a military that possessed only four armies in total. The obsession of the siege boiled down to seizing 203 Meter Hill. Looking up at the hill from below, its tactical necessity becomes starkly apparent: once an observer reaches the summit with artillery spotters, they can adjust lines of fire with pinpoint accuracy down into the harbor, dictating exactly which warship gets sunk.

```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: The Siege of Port Arthur Mechanics accDescr: Progression from the bloody frontal assaults on 203 Meter Hill to harbor destruction and premature capitulation. subgraph Assault["Assault & Observation"] A["Nogi's Costly Frontal Assaults (45,000 Japanese casualties)"] --> B["Capture of 203 Meter Hill"] B --> C["Artillery Spotters Directed Down into Harbor"] end subgraph Capitulation["Destruction & Fall"] C --> D["Heavy Guns Brought Up (1 Week)"] D --> E["Fleet Sunk at Anchor (3 Days)"] E --> F["Russian Capitulation (Despite Abundant Stores & 3,000 Horses)"] end ```

Once Japanese soldiers clawed their way to the top of 203 Meter Hill, it took an additional week to drag the heavy siege guns into position. Once mounted, it took a mere three days of observed shelling to sink every Russian warship anchored below. Following that catastrophic barrage, the Russian commanders "scratched their heads for about a month" before deciding to surrender the fortress. Yet Russian food stores tell a revealing story: the defenders held sufficient provisions to hold out for at least another month, if not considerably longer, boasting among other rations "3,000 highly edible horses if they really want to stick around."

Russian war planners had fundamentally failed to appreciate the concept of a "fortress in being." Had they recognized the strategic value of Port Arthur as an operational anchor, they could have prolonged the siege to pin down vast quantities of Japanese manpower and artillery assets that were desperately needed elsewhere in Manchuria. Russian leadership simply lacked the strategic cleverness to turn that fortress trap to their operational advantage.

- **Casualty toll**: General Nogi sacrificed ~45,000 soldiers in frontal attacks—roughly 25% of Japan's total initial four-army ground force. - **Firepower timeline**: 7 days to haul the siege artillery to the crest of 203 Meter Hill; 3 days of observed fire to annihilate the anchored Russian squadron. - **Unused defensive reserves**: Over a month's worth of grain and dry stores, supplemented by 3,000 horses suitable for food, remained unconsumed when the fortress surrendered.

---

[12:14](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6cjAEr08qk&t=734s) Decisive, Pivotal, and Lopsided Battles: Sharpening Analytical Arguments

Determining the exact "culminating point of attack" at Port Arthur presents a classic historical exercise in assembling evidence and defending an analytical thesis against counterarguments. One compelling thesis identifies the capture of 203 Meter Hill itself as the culminating point: without the sanctuary provided by the heights, the anchored fleet was irrevocably doomed, turning its ultimate destruction into a mere matter of time. Conversely, an equally rigorous counterargument contends that the culminating point was not reached until the fleet was physically destroyed at the bottom of the harbor. Because the intact fleet pinned immense Japanese naval and land assets, the overarching operational objective remained unfulfilled until the warships were resting on the harbor floor. Formulating historical arguments requires structuring clear points and counterpoints while avoiding repeating the primary thesis inside the rebuttal.

This distinction ties directly into how military theorists classify major engagements. Carl von Clausewitz and Mao Zedong used the term "decisive battle" strictly to mean a war-winning engagement—a clash that conclusively settles the entire contest. Clausewitz observed that campaigns determined by a single battle have become somewhat common in modern times, but battles that definitively conclude an entire war are exceptionally rare. Careless usage often treats "decisive" as a vague synonym for "important," which empties the term of analytical value:

> "If you use it to mean important, you're actually not conveying anything. Important in what way? And for instance, I would use different words for a battle where the casualty rates are really skewed. I would use the word lopsided... Another alternative will be pivotal battle."

Port Arthur was distinctly *not* a decisive battle, as massive clashes on land and sea immediately followed it. It was, however, profoundly *pivotal*: its conclusion foreclosed strategic possibilities for the Russian Empire while unlocking theater-wide mobility and concentration of force for Imperial Japan.

---

[14:24](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6cjAEr08qk&t=864s) The Five Candidates for Victory and Option 1: The Russian Revolution of 1905

As Japanese field armies crawled northward along the railway toward the central junction of Harbin—where the east-west and north-south railway lines intersected—the overarching strategic question becomes whether the entire war concluded before, after, or precisely at Japan's culminating point of victory. Ending a war precisely at that apex represents the "Goldilocks" scenario where the strategic porridge is "just right." Evaluating that termination involves five distinct candidate events across the campaign:

```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: Five Hypotheses for the Culminating Point of Victory accDescr: The five potential events that marked the culminating point of victory in the Russo-Japanese War. subgraph Domestic["Domestic & Economic Exhaustion"] H1["1. Home Front Collapse (1905 Russian Revolution & Bloody Sunday)"] H3["3. Financial Depletion (St. Petersburg Facing Bankruptcy)"] end subgraph Operational["Decisive Clashes & Bargaining Chips"] H2["2. Battle of Mukden (Largest Land Battle on Record)"] H4["4. Battle of Tsushima (Total Annihilation of Baltic Fleet)"] H5["5. Invasion of Sakhalin (Territorial Leverage for Portsmouth Talks)"] end ```

The first argument locates the true culminating point in Russian domestic instability. Politically, Tsarist Russia was among the most backward states in Europe, where a rapidly urbanizing, increasingly educated population possessed zero formal voice in governance. Across all of Europe, only three polities still lacked an elected legislature: the Russian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the tiny principality of Montenegro. Even Japan operated a functioning national diet, leaving Russians to question Nicholas II's stubborn refusal to reform.

By late 1904, public fury compounded as the war went badly in a remote theater ordinary Russians could not even locate on a map. Conscripted reserves began rioting at mobilization depots across European Russia. In the heartland near the Tsar's residences, these mutinous reserves vastly outnumbered regular garrison units—a terrifying dynamic for an unpopular autocrat burdened with an even more unpopular wife, Tsarina Alexandra. In January 1905, when peaceful crowds marched toward the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg to present a humble petition, the Tsar was not in residence. Panicked imperial troops opened fire into the crowd, slaughtering demonstrators on "Bloody Sunday." The massacre shattered the moral legitimacy of the Romanov dynasty, forcing Nicholas II into hasty, begrudging political concessions to establish the Duma.

---

[17:23](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6cjAEr08qk&t=1043s) The "Bologna Flask" of Will and Option 2: The Meatgrinder at Mukden

To explain the psychological fragility of political regimes facing military shock, Clausewitz employed the metaphor of the "Bologna flask" (a glass phial so structurally tough on the outside that it can be used to hammer nails into wood, yet so internally strained that a single scratch to its interior surface causes the entire vessel to violently explode into powder):

> "Clausewitz is using this to describe war termination where you're going at an enemy and you have no idea: is it going to act like a hammer or is it going to shatter? The question is whether the first shock of battle will steel the enemy's resolve and stiffen his resistance—which is what happened to Putin in Ukraine—or whether, like the Bologna flask, it will shatter as soon as its surface is scratched."

Assessing an adversary's staying power is one of the most fraught challenges in grand strategy: will they endure indefinite hardship, as the North Vietnamese did, or will their nerve crack? In 1905, Tsar Nicholas II's personal "Bologna flask" shattered. Because Russia operated as an absolute autocracy, once the monarch personally concluded that the game was up, the war was effectively over.

The second alternative candidate for the culminating point is the gargantuan Battle of Mukden. Mukden was a massive meatgrinder into which Japan poured every available soldier, drafting teenagers who were too young, veterans who were too old, and survivors who were physically exhausted. Even with total national mobilization, Japan fielded 125,000 fewer men at Mukden than the Russian army. Tokyo had staked the entire war on exploiting a narrow window of operational superiority before the incomplete Trans-Siberian Railway could ramp up delivery of the Tsar's vast reserves.

Early in the conflict, the railway could deliver only 20,000 to 40,000 Russian soldiers per month to the Far East. By the Battle of Mukden, engineers had expanded capacity to 100,000 men per month. Had Russia possessed that logistics throughput in February 1904, Japan would have been instantly crushed by superior numbers. At the start of the conflict, Russia maintained fewer than 100,000 troops in the Asian theater. By August 1904 at the Battle of Liaoyang, Russian strength reached roughly 150,000—outnumbering the Japanese by 20,000. By August 1905, a month before the Treaty of Portsmouth was signed, Russia had concentrated nearly 800,000 troops in Manchuria, an immense force that nonetheless represented a mere 40 percent of the Russian Empire's total standing military.

- **Comparative force sizes at Mukden**: Japan entered the battle with a 125,000-man deficit compared to the Russian army deployed on the line. - **Trans-Siberian Railway capacity surge**: Delivery rates expanded from 20,000–40,000 troops per month in early 1904 to 100,000 per month by early 1905. - **Russian theater troop progression**: - *February 1904*: Under 100,000 men. - *August 1904 (Battle of Liaoyang)*: ~150,000 men (exceeding Japanese numbers by ~20,000). - *August 1905 (Eve of Portsmouth Treaty)*: Nearly 800,000 men in theater (yet only ~40% of Russia's total army).

[20:05](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6cjAEr08qk&t=1205s) The Pre-Planned American Exit Strategy

Japan mobilized every resource at its disposal, sending fewer than 700,000 men to the front, while the Russian Empire commanded roughly three million troops overall. Had Tsar Nicholas II steeled himself to fight just one more massive engagement, Japan could easily have ended up in a world of hurt. The Japanese leadership understood their precarious position long before firing the first shot. Even before the opening strike on Port Arthur, Tokyo had pre-engineered its exit strategy around a key diplomatic broker: President Theodore Roosevelt. Japan counted on Americans acting as global busybodies, and the calculation proved entirely correct.

Prime Minister Itō Hirobumi set the diplomatic apparatus in motion well in advance. He deployed Viscount Kaneko Kentarō—a Harvard graduate and personal acquaintance of fellow Harvard alumnus Theodore Roosevelt—to open a backchannel requesting American mediation when the right moment arrived. When formal peace talks finally commenced, they were entrusted to another Harvard alumnus, Baron Komura Jutarō.

Following the grueling Battle of Mukden, Field Marshal Yamagata Aritomo recognized that the Japanese army had hit a brick wall and played the American card. Yamagata reasoned that Russia would never initiate peace negotiations unless foreign troops marched on Moscow or St. Petersburg, which was an impossibility. As Yamagata observed, Russia still held massive troop reserves in its European homeland, whereas Japan had fully exhausted its own manpower. Furthermore, Russia possessed a deep bench of reserve officers, while Japan had lost an irreplaceable number of commanders since the outbreak of hostilities. The chief of staff of the Manchurian Army fully agreed with this assessment, remarking that if you start a fire, you have to be ready to put it out—and the time had come to summon the American fire department to extinguish the conflagration.

```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: Japanese Diplomatic Strategy for Ending the War accDescr: Flowchart illustrating how Japan's leadership prepared an exit strategy through Harvard alumni backchannels to Theodore Roosevelt.

subgraph Preparation["Pre-War Strategic Planning"] Ito["Prime Minister Itō Hirobumi"] --> Kaneko["Viscount Kaneko Kentarō (Harvard Alum)"] Kaneko --> TR["President Theodore Roosevelt (Harvard Alum)"] end

subgraph BattlefieldCulmination["Battlefield Exhaustion"] Mukden["Battle of Mukden (Manpower Exhausted)"] --> Yamagata["Field Marshal Yamagata Aritomo & Manchurian Army Staff"] end

subgraph Termination["War Termination"] Yamagata --> CallTR["Activate Roosevelt Mediation"] TR --> Portsmouth["Portsmouth Peace Conference"] Komura["Baron Komura Jutarō (Lead Negotiator / Harvard Alum)"] --> Portsmouth end ```

[21:52](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6cjAEr08qk&t=1312s) Financial Exhaustion and the Battle of Tsushima

Beyond battlefield milestones, financial solvency served as a distinct culminating point of victory. Both empires depended heavily on foreign debt to fund the conflict, but Japan's string of victories altered the credit landscape. Because Japanese forces were winning on the ground, Tokyo's borrowing rates fell, making successive loans significantly cheaper. Crucially, Japan managed to secure its final two major loans in the immediate aftermath of Mukden; while the empire lacked the fresh infantry to advance farther, it still commanded the credit required to hold the line. Russia's fiscal health, by contrast, collapsed. Facing an economic recession and severe agricultural crop failures prior to the war, state revenues shriveled. After Mukden, foreign bankers concluded Russia was a toxic credit risk and shut their doors. By the time the peace treaty was signed at Portsmouth, the imperial treasury had to float an emergency loan simply to afford the train fares required to transport its soldiers out of East Asia and back to European Russia.

```mermaid flowchart LR accTitle: Divergent War Financing Paths accDescr: Diagram contrasting Japan's improving credit access with Russia's financial collapse following the Battle of Mukden.

subgraph JapanFinance["Japan's War Credit"] JVictories["Battlefield Victories"] --> JRates["Falling Borrowing Rates"] JRates --> JLoans["Secures Crucial Loans After Mukden"] end

subgraph RussiaFinance["Russia's Financial Ruin"] RPreWar["Recession & Crop Failures"] --> RDefeats["Defeat at Mukden"] RDefeats --> RBlocked["Global Bankers Cut Credit"] RBlocked --> REmergency["Emergency Loan Merely to Evacuate Troops Home"] end ```

For those seeking a naval turning point, Nicholas II provided an astonishingly lopsided demonstration at the Battle of Tsushima in May 1905. The Russian sovereign never needed to fight this engagement at all. Moscow's forces in Manchuria were supplied by the overland Trans-Siberian Railway, with zero dependence on maritime cargo. While land conditions were improving for Russia day by day as reinforcements arrived, Nicholas dispatched his Baltic Fleet halfway around the globe directly into Japanese home waters.

The resulting clash proved an unmitigated catastrophe for Russia. The Imperial Japanese Navy lost just three small torpedo boats while utterly destroying or capturing the opposing armada. In fact, by commandeering surviving Russian battleships and cruisers, the Japanese fleet ended the battle larger than when it began, while only a handful of obsolete Russian vessels escaped to neutral or home ports.

- **Financial Culmination**: Japan's military victories lowered its sovereign borrowing rates, enabling Tokyo to fund operations past Mukden despite running out of infantry replacements. - **Russian Solvency Crisis**: Foreign lenders refused to issue further capital to St. Petersburg after Mukden, leaving Nicholas II with an exhausted war treasury. - **Naval Imbalance at Tsushima**: Japan sacrificed only three torpedo boats while annihilating the Russian fleet, capturing enough functional enemy warships to net an overall increase in total fleet tonnage.

[24:14](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6cjAEr08qk&t=1454s) Sakhalin Island and the Model Settlement at Portsmouth

The final potential culminating point came with the seizure of Sakhalin Island. At the very tail end of the war, President Roosevelt nudged Japan to occupy the island because Russian forces could do nothing to defend it. As sovereign Russian territory, its conquest offered Tokyo an invaluable bargaining chip: Japanese negotiators could trade away part of the island during negotiations to secure objectives they valued far more. Losing sovereign domestic soil to an Asian power dealt a devastating psychological blow to Nicholas II and Russian prestige, given the prevailing racial prejudices of European empires. To the Japanese, Sakhalin was largely prized as an abundant fishery full of excellent crab, but its political leverage proved decisive in cracking the Tsar's resolve.

Whether one points to domestic revolution, the slaughter at Mukden, financial exhaustion, Tsushima, or the loss of Sakhalin, Nicholas II's stubbornness ultimately shattered like a "Bologna flask." A devoted family man and loving father, Nicholas was nonetheless an incompetent autocrat whose failures a decade later in World War I would culminate in his execution in a Siberian basement.

For Japan, the conflict represents an absolute textbook model of war termination. Tokyo entered the war with limited, clearly defined objectives: eject Russia from Manchuria and establish undisputed hegemony over Korea. At Portsmouth, Japan secured both aims and much more. It acquired an expansive sphere of influence across southern Manchuria—a region the combined size of France and Germany—along with the valuable South Manchuria Railway concession, the fortified naval base at Port Arthur, and all associated equipment. Russia additionally ceded the southern half of Sakhalin Island. Above all, the victory confirmed the geopolitical trajectory begun during the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895, formalizing Japan's standing as the preeminent power in East Asia.

- **The Five Possible Culminating Points**: 1. The domestic implosion and revolutionary turmoil within Russia. 2. The massive land engagement and casualty toll at Mukden. 3. The drying up of Russian sovereign credit against Japan's funded loans. 4. The absolute destruction of the Russian fleet at Tsushima. 5. The seizure and political leverage of Sakhalin Island. - **Japan's Portsmouth Gains**: Recognized dominion over Korea, southern Manchuria sphere of influence, Port Arthur naval complex, South Manchuria Railway, and South Sakhalin.

[26:54](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6cjAEr08qk&t=1614s) The Gulf War: Masterclass in Limited War and Cost Distribution

Operation Desert Storm represents an even more striking model of war termination, achieving sweeping political success at virtually zero financial cost to the United States and with unprecedentedly low casualties. The crisis originated when Saddam Hussein found his regime financially broke in the wake of the bloody eight-year Iran-Iraq War. Saddam invaded Kuwait to erase Baghdad's massive war debts to the emirate and seize Kuwait's prolific oil fields. Controlling both reserves would have positioned Iraq as the dominant swing producer in global petroleum markets.

In unlimited warfare, strategic aims are straightforward: total regime overthrow. Limited wars, however, exist along an ambiguous spectrum ranging from minor border concessions to near-overthrow, and governments routinely fail to articulate where their stopping point lies. President George H.W. Bush avoided this trap by outlining explicit, finite goals in National Security Directive 54. Bush committed the coalition to forcing Iraq out of Kuwait, restoring Kuwait's sovereign government, protecting American lives, and stabilizing the Persian Gulf. Rather than expanding the mandate when battlefield fortunes surged, the administration achieved every stated priority and halted operations.

```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: George H.W. Bush Limited War Architecture (NSD 54) accDescr: Flowchart showing the defined policy goals of National Security Directive 54 and how they were achieved in the Gulf War.

subgraph Directive["National Security Directive 54"] Obj1["Expel Iraqi Forces from Kuwait"] Obj2["Restore Legitimate Kuwaiti Government"] Obj3["Safeguard American Citizens"] Obj4["Promote Regional Stability in Persian Gulf"] end

subgraph CoalitionExecution["Multilateral Execution"] MilForce["Coalition Air & Ground Offensives"] --> Expel["Iraqi Army Ejected"] Expel --> StatusQuo["Kuwait Restored & Oil Threat Neutralized"] end

Directive --> CoalitionExecution ```

Financially and diplomatically, the Gulf War was an anomaly in military history. While the United States deployed roughly 700,000 personnel, its 34 coalition partners dispatched over 200,000 troops and covered the entire bill. Allies paid the United States more than $50 billion to fund American military expenditures, alongside another $14 billion distributed to regional partners. Casualties mirrored this total asymmetry: while Iraqi forces suffered between 20,000 and 35,000 military fatalities and up to 3,000 civilian deaths from air strikes, coalition casualties totaled just 392, of which 258 were American. Much like Russia in 1904, Saddam found himself diplomatically isolated against a coordinated world order, while the United States orchestrated a coalition where the world's wealthiest nations financed an overwhelming victory.

- **Financial Subsidies**: Allied coalition partners transferred over $50 billion directly to the US government, plus $14 billion to other coalition participants, fully offsetting American war costs. - **Troop Commitments**: Coalition partners contributed over 200,000 troops alongside the roughly 700,000 Americans deployed in theater. - **Casualty Disparity**: Coalition fatalities stopped at 392 (258 American), set against 20,000 to 35,000 Iraqi military deaths and approximately 3,000 civilian casualties.

[30:28](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6cjAEr08qk&t=1828s) The Korean War, Geography, and the Problem of "Big Buddies"

The Korean War stands in stark contrast to the clean execution of the Gulf War. While it eventually concluded with the restoration of the status quo ante bellum as a divided peninsula, the geography of the theater created massive strategic complications. On paper, fighting in Korea looks deceptively manageable: the land border between North and South Korea is a mere 250 kilometers, and the peninsula is surrounded by maritime borders. For the United States, as the dominant naval power facing an adversary with essentially no navy, this meant it could easily implement blockades, deploy carrier aircraft, and bring naval gunfire to bear on coastal targets—especially advantageous since much of the Korean railway network ran right along the shoreline.

```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: Geography of the Korean War Theater accDescr: Diagram illustrating maritime vulnerability versus the un-isolatable northern land border with China and Russia. subgraph Peninsula["Peninsula Dynamics"] South["South Korea"] DMZ["Land Border (250 km)"] North["North Korea"] end subgraph NavalDomain["Maritime Dominance"] USNavy["US Maritime & Air Power (Blockade & Shore Bombardment)"] Rail["Vulnerable Shoreline Railways"] end subgraph Sanctuary["Northern Sanctuaries"] China["China (1,400+ km border) Manchurian Industrial Base"] Russia["Russia (17 km border)"] end

USNavy --> Rail USNavy -.->|Dominates coastline| North North --- DMZ --- South North --- China North --- Russia ```

However, the northern border completely broke this geographic advantage. While the border with Russia is tiny—around 17 kilometers—the border with China stretches over 1,400 kilometers. At the time, Manchuria served as the heart of China's industrial base, making it impossible for the United Nations forces to truly isolate the theater of war. In Paine’s formulation, the North Koreans had "big buddies with an un-interdicted supply line." Worse yet, both sides possessed big buddies willing to pour in massive supplies of aid. Whenever a conflict features external patrons continually funneling resources to opposing factions, the inevitable result is a protracted, bloody war that wrecks the local territory and slaughters vast numbers of people.

- The inter-Korean land border spans roughly 250 kilometers. - The North Korean border with Russia is approximately 17 kilometers, while the border with China exceeds 1,400 kilometers. - Manchuria acted as China's key industrial redoubt, providing an un-interdictable base of supply directly abutting the war zone.

---

[32:09](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6cjAEr08qk&t=1929s) Clausewitz on Ends vs. Means: Limited and Unlimited Wars

Beyond the geographical traps, the United States suffered from critical strategic incoherence in Korea. Unlike Japan during the Russo-Japanese War, which kept its minimum objectives crystal clear, and unlike George H. W. Bush in the First Gulf War, American leadership in Korea vacillated disastrously. Washington could not decide whether it simply wanted a limited victory—restoring the pre-war territorial boundary—or whether, carried away by military momentum, it should pursue the unlimited objective of conquering the entire peninsula. Paine stresses that Carl von Clausewitz offered severe warnings about this kind of waffling: the political objective must always remain primary and must never be subordinated to the military point of view. Allowing battlefield success to dictate political ambitions ("we're on a roll militarily, let's take the whole peninsula") ignores the fundamental question of why the war is being fought in the first place.

Clausewitz observed that wars exist on a wide spectrum ranging from simple armed observation to complete extermination, but fundamentally reduce to two categories based on their political ends: limited and unlimited. Importantly, Clausewitz argued that the defining discriminator between types of war is *not* the amount of effort or resources expended (the means), but rather the scale of the objective (the ends). Unlimited war seeks regime change—rendering the adversary politically helpless and militarily impotent to dictate whatever peace terms one pleases. Limited war, by contrast, seeks lesser goals, such as seizing specific frontier districts to annex or trade away at the negotiating table.

- Clausewitz's core dictums: The political objective determines both the military objective to be reached and the effort required. - In unlimited war, the defeated party has zero options left; in limited war, the original regime remains intact, meaning you must negotiate with them and they may return to cause trouble later. - As an illustration of unlimited war: the U.S. chose to retain Emperor Hirohito after World War II not because its goals were limited, but because keeping him alive as an authority figure to sign the new constitution legitimized American reforms.

---

[34:48](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6cjAEr08qk&t=2088s) Sun Tzu's "Death Ground" and the Perils of Overreach

To understand why unlimited wars are so brutally hard to execute, Paine pairs Clausewitz with Sun Tzu’s ancient concept of "death ground"—the terrain where an army survives only if it fights with the desperate courage of having no alternative. When a belligerent pursues an unlimited objective, the opposing leadership (and often its population, if faced with genocidal intent) knows it is marked for annihilation. Putting an enemy on death ground can instantly transform even a fragile or failing state into a lethal, fiercely determined adversary because everyone knows they are "dead men" if they surrender. Paine points to the modern war in Ukraine as an explicit example: Russian aims placed Ukrainians on death ground, defying the expectations of pundits who failed to realize that people fight to the bitter end when survival itself is on the line.

```mermaid flowchart LR accTitle: The Dynamics of Death Ground accDescr: Flowchart showing how imposing unlimited objectives pushes an adversary onto death ground and magnifies resistance. Obj["Attacker Imposes Unlimited Objective (Regime Overthrow / Annihilation)"] --> DG["Adversary Placed on Sun Tzu's 'Death Ground'"] DG --> Resist["Desperate, Fanatical Resistance (Adversary Has No Alternative)"] Resist --> Cost["Campaign Costs Explode Adversary Becomes Lethal Opponent"] ```

Applying these principles back to Korea illustrates how a warring power can blow right past its culminating points of victory—in this case, twice. First, Kim Il Sung invaded the South under the assumption that it would remain a quick, isolated duel between two local contestants. He was initially correct on the battlefield, roaring down the peninsula until he triggered a catastrophic third-party intervention by the United States and the United Nations. What began as a localized civil conflict mutated into a regional proxy war with global escalatory danger. Had Kim opted for a patient, low-level insurgency instead of a conventional invasion, his outcome might have been entirely different.

The Americans then committed the exact same blunder in reverse. Following General Douglas MacArthur’s triumphant amphibious landing at Incheon, which cleaved the peninsula in two, U.S. leadership let tactical military possibility derail sound strategy. Instead of consolidating a limited victory at the 38th parallel, MacArthur drove north toward the Yalu River to conquer all of North Korea. By advancing directly to the Chinese perimeter, he triggered massive Chinese intervention, plunging the coalition into a "world of hurt" against hundreds of thousands of Chinese troops, and ultimately leading to MacArthur being cashiered. Exceeding the culminating point of victory ensured that the United States paid an enormous, unnecessary price in blood and treasure, only to end up right where it started: guarding a divided peninsula with expensive garrison forces for the next seven decades.

- A clear indicator that an army has blown past its culminating point of victory is the sudden intervention of a hostile third party. - Korea saw two successive culminating point failures: Kim Il Sung's invasion brought in the UN and the US; MacArthur's march to the Yalu brought in China. - MacArthur's refusal to align military operations with prudent political limits eventually resulted in his public firing by President Truman.

---

[39:32](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6cjAEr08qk&t=2372s) Pathologies of Escalation: The American Revolution Goes Global

Paine transitions from local culminating points to one of the most dangerous pathologies in military history: regional wars escalating into global conflagrations. The American Revolutionary War serves as a classic case study in asymmetric war aims and global escalation. From the vantage point of the thirteen colonies, the war had limited objectives: they sought their own independence, harboring no fantasies of marching into London to overthrow King George III. From the British perspective, however, the war was unlimited: the British Crown intended to crush the Continental Congress and eliminate the Continental Army—a regime change campaign that placed the American revolutionaries squarely on death ground.

```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: Escalation of the American Revolutionary War accDescr: Diagram tracing the expansion of the American Revolution from a regional insurrection to a global coalition war against Britain. subgraph Regional["Regional Insurrection (1775)"] Rebels["13 Colonies on 'Death Ground'"] UK["Great Britain seeks regime change"] end subgraph GlobalEscalation["Global Escalation"] France["1778: France Allies with Colonies (Attacks Savannah)"] Spain["1779: Spain Allies with France (Attacks Louisiana)"] Dutch["1780: Britain Attacks Dutch"] end

UK --- Rebels Rebels -.->|Protracted War of Attrition| GlobalEscalation France --> UK Spain --> UK UK --> Dutch ```

Because North America was an immense, unforgiving theater, the conflict dragged on. That protraction gave Britain's jealous European rivals ample time to calculate how to take the British Empire down a peg. In 1778, France allied with the American colonies; in 1779, Spain allied with France; and by 1780, Britain launched attacks on the Dutch. Within five years, what had started as an internal colonial insurrection in North America had metastasized into a sprawling world war. British forces were suddenly fighting French forces in Savannah, dealing with Spanish assaults in Louisiana, and defending far-flung imperial holdings across the globe.

- 1778: France officially enters an alliance with the American revolutionaries. - 1779: Spain joins the conflict as an ally of France. - 1780: Great Britain attacks the Dutch Republic, further broadening the coalition of hostile naval powers. - Global flare-ups included French military operations targeting Savannah, Georgia, and Spanish campaigns in Louisiana.

[40:31](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6cjAEr08qk&t=2431s) The Global Imperial Scramble and the Value of the Caribbean

When regional conflicts escalate into global scrambles, imperial powers are forced to make hard calculations about what territory is genuinely worth defending. During the American Revolutionary War, fighting sprawled across the globe far beyond North America. The French attempted to invade England from the Isle of Wight, while British and French fleets clashed off Ushant. In the Mediterranean and Atlantic, French and Spanish forces besieged British possessions at Gibraltar and Minorca, and raided the Cape Verde Islands off the coast of Africa. In the Indian Ocean, Britain struck back against French trading posts at Mahé and Pondicherry.

Amid this worldwide conflagration, the truly valuable prize was not the rebelling North American continent, but the Caribbean theater. In the eighteenth century, the West Indies were the lucrative "sugar islands" that drove European imperial commerce. Facing overextension across multiple oceans, the British looked at the strategic ledger and made a cold calculation: cut losses, "get rid of the revolting colonies" because they simply were not worth much at the time, and preserve their high-yield holdings in the Caribbean. Rather than fight an endless global war to retain North America, Britain chose to reassess its priorities and bail.

[41:16](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6cjAEr08qk&t=2476s) Why World War I Escalated: Misaligned War Aims and Entangling Alliances

World War I, by contrast, ended in disaster for every participant because no one had the option or the will to simply cut their losses. Prior to the outbreak of war in 1914, every European power envisioned executing a neat, localized regional war. The plan was straightforward: poach a slice of border territory in Europe, or inflict enough pain on an adversary to force them to cede valuable overseas colonies. The fatal flaw was that even within the same alliance bloc, every country wanted completely different things, meaning their primary theaters and political aims never aligned.

Britain fought strictly to preserve the European status quo, an outcome no other major belligerent desired. France was fixated on reclaiming Alsace-Lorraine, the territory wrenched away by Prussia after the Franco-Prussian War. Italy sought territorial expansion along the Eastern Mediterranean and the Adriatic. Imperial Russia was determined to dominate the Balkans, aiming to expel the Catholic Austro-Hungarian Empire from the region entirely and protect Serbia. Austria-Hungary had no intention of backing down in Serbia, especially after Serbian nationalists assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the Habsburg heir to the throne; Vienna wanted to consolidate and expand its own Balkan footprint. Meanwhile, the Ottoman Empire sought to recover lost Balkan territories, and imperial Germany craved an expansive global colonial empire.

Because these war aims were running in parallel rather than converging, the coalition partners found themselves locked into a conflict they could neither coordinate nor conclude. Once every power joined the fray, the war they found themselves fighting bore no resemblance to the brief campaign they had planned. Peace proved impossible to negotiate because no government could broker a settlement that would satisfy all of its own allies, let alone offer terms acceptable enough to persuade the opposing coalition to surrender. Since no single nation dared to abandon its partners and fight alone, the slaughter dragged on relentlessly.

```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: Allied Fragmentation and Incompatible War Aims in World War I accDescr: Diagram illustrating how allied powers pursued divergent and contradictory strategic objectives during World War I.

subgraph Entente["Triple Entente & Associated Powers"] UK["Britain: Preserve continental status quo"] FR["France: Reclaim Alsace-Lorraine"] RU["Russia: Dominance over the Balkans"] IT["Italy: Expansion in Eastern Mediterranean"] end

subgraph Central["Central Powers"] AH["Austria-Hungary: Crush Serbia & expand in Balkans"] DE["Germany: Acquire global colonial empire"] OE["Ottomans: Recover lost Balkan territories"] end

Entente -.->|"Incompatible peace terms prevent settlement"| Central ```

[43:01](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6cjAEr08qk&t=2581s) Japan's Path to Total War: From Smoot-Hawley to Pearl Harbor

A similar dynamic of unchecked escalation occurred in Asia, triggered initially by economic isolationism. During the Great Depression, the original "America Firsters" pushed protectionist legislation to shield domestic employment, culminating in the Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930, which spiked American import duties. Prominent economists pleaded with President Herbert Hoover to veto the bill, warning that foreign trading partners would retaliate and collapse global commerce without aiding American recovery. Hoover signed it regardless. International partners retaliated immediately, cratering global trade.

Viewing the crisis purely through domestic American politics ignores the desperate reality on the other side of the net. Foreign countries possessed far lower standards of living and lacked the economic resilience of the United States. Deepening poverty destabilized global politics, creating the toxic conditions that allowed Adolf Hitler to seize power in Germany and radicalized Japanese leadership. Japan had spent decades actively cooperating with the Western-led international order and was an original founding member of the League of Nations—an institution the United States never joined. As a resource-poor, trade-dependent island nation suddenly shut out of international markets by Western protectionism, Tokyo pivoted toward imperial conquest to achieve autarky, invading Manchuria in 1931 to secure an independent industrial resource base.

Manchuria began as a regional conflict, but Tokyo soon expanded the invasion into a full-scale war across all of China in 1937. By attempting to subjugate the entire nation rather than slicing off peripheral territory, Japan inadvertently placed the Chinese on Sun Tzu's "death ground." China's deeply fractured, warring domestic factions recognized an existential threat, ceased fighting one another, and united to fight the Japanese Imperial Army to a bloody stalemate. As the Chinese implemented an exhausting victory-denial strategy, the Japanese economy began to crack under the strain. Desperate to break the deadlock, Tokyo convinced itself that cutting off foreign aid funneled to Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist government would finally force a Chinese collapse.

American historical memory often views the attack on Pearl Harbor through an exclusively self-focused lens, but Pearl Harbor was merely one component of a vast, synchronized offensive launched across the Pacific on December 7 and 8, 1941. At the very same moment Japanese planes struck Hawaii, imperial forces assaulted British Malaya, Singapore, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Guam, Wake Island, Thailand, and the Shanghai International Settlement. Japan aimed to eliminate every regional redoubt that could provide assistance to Nationalist China. Instead of intimidating the Western powers into abandoning Asia, the gambit backfired catastrophically: the United States, Great Britain, Australia, and New Zealand united, bringing their combined industrial power down on Japan.

- Regional wars that explode into uncontrollable global conflagrations share distinct pathologies: - They occur in massive geographical theaters that are nearly impossible for an expeditionary military to fully garrison or seal off. - As the timeline protracts, external third parties are given ample opportunity to intervene with weapons, funds, and direct military support. - The adopting of unlimited political objectives—such as conquest or regime change—places the defender on death ground, compelling them to fight indefinitely. - Escalating casualties and sunken costs harden public and political resolve, rendering leaders increasingly unwilling to compromise or accept negotiated settlements.

[46:38](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6cjAEr08qk&t=2798s) Asymmetric Attrition: Guerrilla War and the "Value of the Object"

A distinct strategic pathology arises when an invading power shatters an enemy's conventional armed forces, only to face a lethal, protracted insurgency that makes stabilization impossible. An conquered theater is economically useless if it cannot be pacified; occupying forces end up bleeding state revenues on permanent garrison duties instead of extracting wealth. In wartime China, Imperial Japan repeatedly defeated Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist divisions in open conventional warfare, but the Nationalists continuously reconstituted their armies while collaborating with Communist forces to wage widespread guerrilla campaigns behind the lines.

This twin threat pinned the Japanese military on the horns of a painful operational dilemma:

```mermaid flowchart LR accTitle: The Counterinsurgent's Operational Dilemma accDescr: Flowchart showing how an occupying power is trapped between concentrating forces against conventional armies or dispersing them to fight guerrillas.

subgraph Dilemma["Imperial Occupier's Dilemma"] A["Concentrate Forces"] -->|"Defeats conventional army"| B["Leaves rear areas vulnerable to guerrillas"] C["Disperse Forces"] -->|"Secures rear garrison lines"| D["Leaves units vulnerable to concentrated enemy armies"] end ```

If the Japanese concentrated their forces to defeat the Nationalist conventional armies, they vacated the rear, leaving communication lines and infrastructure vulnerable to guerrilla strikes. If they dispersed their divisions across the countryside to hunt insurgents, they left their isolated detachments vulnerable to concentrated conventional counterattacks.

This dual-track approach was famously pioneered during the American Revolution by George Washington. While Washington was initially skeptical of decentralized militias, he came to realize that the Continental Army forced the British to concentrate their main battle forces, while local colonial militias roamed the countryside imposing continuous logistical costs on British detachments. This dynamic relies directly on the strategic concept of the "value of the object"—the intrinsic worth a combatant assigns to their political objective.

For an indigenous population fighting on home soil, the value of the object is existential and nearly infinite. For a distant foreign power projecting force abroad, the value of the object is inherently limited and discretionary. Washington calculated that by relentlessly ratcheting up the operational and human costs of the war, he could eventually exceed the price the British government was willing to pay to retain the colonies. This exact cost-imposition strategy was later turned against the United States with devastating effect in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, eventually compelling Washington to abandon each conflict after exhausting its political will.

[48:58](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6cjAEr08qk&t=2938s) The Illusion of Rapid Victory: Mosaic Societies and the 2003 Iraq War

The contrast between the 1991 Gulf War and the 2003 invasion of Iraq highlights the perils of shifting from limited to unlimited objectives. The first Gulf War pursued strictly limited aims—ejecting Iraqi forces from Kuwait—and succeeded rapidly at minimal financial and human cost to the coalition. In 2003, the United States pursued an unlimited objective: total regime change and the dismantling of the Ba'athist state in Baghdad. While the conventional campaign to topple Saddam Hussein proved remarkably swift, the political aftermath illustrated an unforgiving rule of intervention: when you depose a government through regime change, "the loaded diaper is yours."

The fundamental crisis confronting American occupation authorities was that Iraq and its surrounding neighbors are deeply fragmented "mosaic societies." In these environments, primary communal allegiances are rooted in sectarian, tribal, and ethnic identities—such as Sunni, Shia, and Kurd—rather than in a cohesive national identity. On an ethnographic map of such a state, virtually every community harbors historical grievances against neighboring groups, often viewing coexistence as an existential struggle.

Building functional, democratic state institutions in a mosaic society is an extraordinarily difficult undertaking: - In conflicts like the Korean War, both sides never questioned their shared national identity; every belligerent agreed they were fundamentally Korean, focusing the struggle entirely on which state institutions and political systems would govern them. - In mosaic societies lacking an overarching national identity, political factions refuse to buy into centralized state institutions because they perceive them as instruments of domination used by rival factions to persecute them. - When an outside power shatters the centralized security apparatus of a mosaic state without an underlying civic consensus to replace it, communal factions inevitably turn their weapons on one another, pulling the occupying power into an anarchic, multi-sided civil war.

[50:16](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6cjAEr08qk&t=3016s) The Geography of Intervention: Gulf War Borders and Meddling Neighbors

The physical geography of an intervention fundamentally dictates whether a military success can be sustained or will unravel into perpetual instability. In the 1991 Gulf War, coalition operations were bounded by a tiny frontier: liberating Kuwait meant securing a mere 158 miles of border. By contrast, when the United States elected to take over the entire state of Iraq in 2003, it suddenly assumed responsibility for over 2,000 miles of international borders. Attempting to isolate and wall off that vast perimeter from outside influence is an almost insurmountable challenge, especially when surrounded by powerful neighbors harboring deep regional ambitions.

Iraq is flanked by three major regional powers—Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Turkey—each driven by its own geopolitical interests, rivalries, and internal security imperatives. In such an environment, external powers "are going to be involved whether you like it or not," and it takes very little effort or resources on their part to disrupt an occupation. A single covert intervention or catastrophic provocation—such as a car bomb detonating at a sacred Shia shrine—can ignite a devastating sectarian civil war. Once communal violence is unleashed across porous frontiers, stabilizing the country becomes virtually impossible.

- **Border Scope Discrepancy:** Liberating Kuwait in the first Gulf War required policing only 158 miles of border, whereas occupying all of Iraq required securing more than 2,000 miles against infiltration. - **Vulnerable Perimeters:** Iraq borders three major competitors for Middle Eastern influence—Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Turkey—guaranteeing regional interference. - **Low Cost of Destabilization:** Proxy meddling requires minimal expenditure; an isolated catastrophic event, such as bombing a sacred shrine, is sufficient to derail stabilization efforts and trigger open sectarian conflict.

[51:06](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6cjAEr08qk&t=3066s) Essential Questions Before War: The Strategic Matrix

```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: Pre-War Strategic Evaluation Matrix accDescr: Flowchart illustrating the key strategic questions Sarah Paine recommends evaluating before entering a war.

subgraph Objectives["1. War Aims & Alignments"] A["Limited vs. Unlimited Objectives (Who wants regime change vs. concessions?)"] B["Alignment of Adversaries & Third Parties (Do outside powers share common goals?)"] end

subgraph Stakes["2. Stakes & Asymmetries"] C["Relative Value of the Object (Existential survival vs. 'Nice to have')"] D["Asymmetry of Will & Endurance (Who can absorb casualties longer?)"] end

subgraph Geography["3. Physical Realities"] E["Geographic Access & Border Control (Perimeter length & neighboring terrain)"] F["Invulnerable Sanctuaries (Safe havens beyond operational leverage)"] end

Objectives --> Stakes --> Geography ```

Before entering any military conflict—or even when reassessing an ongoing one—strategists must construct a rigorous analytical matrix rather than relying on wishful thinking. The foundational inquiry is identifying who is involved and mapping their respective objectives: are their war aims limited or unlimited, and vis-à-vis whom? A country may pursue unlimited aims against one adversary while maintaining strictly limited goals toward others. In the Russo-Ukrainian War, Russia pursues unlimited objectives against Ukraine by seeking the subjugation or overthrow of its sovereign state, whereas Ukraine pursues strictly limited objectives vis-à-vis Russia, fighting to restore its territorial integrity rather than conquer Moscow.

Evaluating the "relative value of the object" reveals who holds the enduring asymmetry of will. For one combatant, victory may be merely a discretionary geopolitical ambition—a "nice to have"—whereas for the defender, it represents sheer existential survival. While Russia has absorbed massive casualties, the outcome remains far more vital to Ukrainians simply because "that's where they live." Finally, planners must analyze physical geography, transit access, and the presence of external sanctuaries. If an adversary enjoys access to safe havens that are immune to retaliation or geographically shielded from attack, an outside power possesses almost no operational leverage to compel their surrender. Synthesizing these asymmetries clarifies which coalitions can realistically hold together, which aims are achievable, and why so many wars prove nearly impossible to bring to a close.

- **Limited vs. Unlimited Aims:** Determine whether actors seek finite concessions or total political subjugation, distinguishing how these aims vary against different neighbors and coalitions. - **Existential Stakes vs. Discretionary Aims:** Measure how much the contested prize matters to each belligerent; populations defending their homeland possess far higher thresholds for pain and casualty tolerance than invaders pursuing optional gains. - **Sanctuaries and Leverage:** Inability to strike enemy staging grounds or interdict open borders deprives an expeditionary force of the leverage required to terminate an insurgency or force a political settlement.

## Notable quotes > [00:03](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6cjAEr08qk&t=3s) It's really easy to get into wars. It's awfully difficult to get out of them. And it is even more difficult to get out of them what you wished you could have gotten out of them. — Sarah Paine

> [10:03](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6cjAEr08qk&t=603s) 3,000 highly edible horses if they really want to stick around. — Sarah Paine

> [12:14](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6cjAEr08qk&t=734s) If you use it to mean important, you're actually not conveying anything. Important in what way? And for instance, I would use different words for a battle where the casualty rates are really skewed. I would use the word lopsided... Another alternative will be pivotal battle. — Sarah Paine

> [17:23](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6cjAEr08qk&t=1043s) Clausewitz is using this to describe war termination where you're going at an enemy and you have no idea: is it going to act like a hammer or is it going to shatter? The question is whether the first shock of battle will steel the enemy's resolve and stiffen his resistance—which is what happened to Putin in Ukraine—or whether, like the Bologna flask, it will shatter as soon as its surface is scratched. — Sarah Paine

> [30:28](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6cjAEr08qk&t=1828s) big buddies with an un-interdicted supply line — Sarah Paine

> [32:09](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6cjAEr08qk&t=1929s) we're on a roll militarily, let's take the whole peninsula — Sarah Paine

> [34:48](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6cjAEr08qk&t=2088s) death ground — Sarah Paine

> [34:48](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6cjAEr08qk&t=2088s) world of hurt — Sarah Paine

> [48:58](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6cjAEr08qk&t=2938s) the loaded diaper is yours — Sarah Paine

> [48:58](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6cjAEr08qk&t=2938s) mosaic societies — Sarah Paine

> [50:16](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6cjAEr08qk&t=3016s) are going to be involved whether you like it or not — Sarah Paine

> [51:06](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6cjAEr08qk&t=3066s) relative value of the object — Sarah Paine

> [51:06](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6cjAEr08qk&t=3066s) nice to have — Sarah Paine

> [51:06](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6cjAEr08qk&t=3066s) that's where they live — Sarah Paine

## Mentioned Sarah Paine, Carl von Clausewitz, Sun Tzu, Mao Zedong, Nicholas II, Tsarina Alexandra, Nogi Maresuke, Itō Hirobumi, Yamagata Aritomo, Kaneko Kentarō, Komura Jutarō, Theodore Roosevelt, George H.W. Bush, Saddam Hussein, Vladimir Putin, Kim Il Sung, Douglas MacArthur, Harry S. Truman, Emperor Hirohito, King George III, George Washington, Herbert Hoover, Adolf Hitler, Chiang Kai-shek, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, Continental Army, Continental Congress, National Security Directive 54, Treaty of Portsmouth, Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, League of Nations, Duma, Trans-Siberian Railway, South Manchuria Railway, Port Arthur, Harbin, Vladivostok, Mukden, Tsushima Strait, Yellow Sea, 203 Meter Hill, Sakhalin Island, Liaodong Peninsula, Winter Palace

## Video description This is the final lecture in our series with Sarah Paine, and it's a fitting place to end.

Sarah tackles war termination: why wars are easy to start, hard to end, and even harder to end on the terms you wanted. Using the Russo-Japanese War as a model, she explains what goes wrong when regional wars escalate into global ones, or when conventional victories turn into endless insurgencies. It's especially relevant given what's going on today.

As we wrap up, I want to thank Sarah for doing this with me. It's been a real privilege to share her lectures with all of you. Thanks for watching.

𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒 00:00:00 – How Japan beat a far bigger Russia 00:08:18 – Clausewitz's culminating points of victory 00:14:24 – What finally made Russia give up? 00:26:54 – Gulf War: the war the US didn't pay for 00:30:31 – Korea and the cost of shifting war aims 00:34:48 – Sun Tzu's "death ground" 00:39:32 – How regional wars go global: WWI to Pearl Harbor 00:46:38 – Why insurgencies deny victory: China to Iraq 00:51:06 – Questions to ask before any war

[Source](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6cjAEr08qk)

中文简报

Sarah Paine警告：无限制战争目标会将对手逼入死地当入侵大国将有限目标升级为政权更迭时，会引发关乎生死存亡的抵抗及敌对第三方的介入，导致战争无法终结。 Sarah Paine探讨了为何在历史上退出军事冲突总是困难重重，并指出军事胜利除非严格系于可实现的政治目标，否则毫无意义。她以日俄战争和1991年海湾战争为分析依托，阐明了严守有限目标、预设外交退路以及认清克劳塞维茨的“胜利顶点”如何防止灾难性的过度扩张。相比之下，扩大为无限目标——例如道格拉斯·麦克阿瑟在朝鲜推进至鸭绿江，或2003年入侵伊拉克——会将对手置于孙子所谓的“死地”，引发外部大国的介入，或在支离破碎的马赛克社会中引爆无法取胜的叛乱。最终，Paine提供了一个战略诊断矩阵，在投入冲突前对政治战争目标、政治意志的不对称性以及易渗透的地理边界进行权衡评估。战争本质上难以终结，因为军事势头往往超出政治目标，使有限干预演变为无休止的投入，或引发敌对第三方的介入。 (0:03) 尽管在人口和工业上处于巨大劣势，明治日本在1904–1905年仍成功击败了俄罗斯帝国，其做法是严格限定政治目标、在战事达到顶峰前安排美国调停，并夺取库页岛作为最终谈判筹码。 (20:05) 追求政权更迭等无限制目标会将对手逼入孙子所谓的“死地”，引发狂热抵抗，因为投降意味着彻底毁灭。 (34:48) 1991年海湾战争根据第54号国家安全指令将目标严格限定于解放科威特，并获得了盟国超过500亿美元的分担资金，从而实现了决定性的终结，这与2003年入侵导致一个种族分裂的马赛克社会陷入动荡形成了鲜明对比。 (26:54)

Reading summary

Historian Sarah Paine argues that war termination is notoriously difficult because leaders routinely conflate limited concessions with regime change, disregard operational culminating points, and overlook the geographic and political dynamics that escalate regional clashes into protracted quagmires. Bounding Objectives and Recognizing Culminating Points (8:19) Paine contrasts the discipline of limited war with the perils of unlimited objectives using Carl von Clausewitz's concept of the "culminating point"—the operational threshold where an offensive reaches peak advantage before consumption of resources and strategic backlash erode gains. Unlimited wars aimed at regime change inevitably push an adversary onto Sun Tzu's "death ground," eliciting desperate, fanatical resistance. In contrast, limited wars target finite concessions, allowing both sides to negotiate peace before exhausting their reserves or triggering third-party intervention. The Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905) and the 1991 Gulf War represent textbook models of bounded termination. Despite facing a Russian Empire commanding three million troops against Japan's exhausted 700,000, Tokyo pre-engineered an exit strategy mediated by President Theodore Roosevelt once it achieved its core aims in Korea and Manchuria. Similarly, George H.W. Bush's administration formulated National Security Directive 54 to restrict Gulf War operations strictly to evicting Iraqi forces from Kuwait—funded by over $50 billion in allied contributions—and halted operations rather than advancing to Baghdad. By contrast, the Korean War demonstrated the risk of overshooting culmination: following the successful Incheon landing, U.S. forces expanded their war aim to conquering the entire peninsula, driving to the Chinese border at the Yalu River and precipitating massive Chinese intervention. Escalation Traps and Misaligned Coalition Aims (39:32) Regional conflicts frequently expand into global wars when protracted fighting invites rival powers to intervene, or when alliances fracture over irreconcilable war aims. During the American Revolutionary War, Britain's pursuit of regime change placed the colonies on death ground and prolonged hostilities. This protraction allowed European rivals to intervene: France entered the war in 1778, Spain joined in 1779, and Britain attacked the Dutch Republic in 1780. Facing overextension from Gibraltar to India, Britain chose to abandon the rebelling North American colonies to protect its lucrative Caribbean sugar islands. Conversely, World War I escalated uncontrollably because the combatants held contradictory, non-converging political objectives. Britain fought to preserve the continental status quo, France demanded the return of Alsace-Lorraine, Imperial Russia aimed to dominate the Balkans, and Germany sought a global colonial empire. With no shared vision of peace, no coalition partner could negotiate an exit without fracturing the alliance. A similar dynamic drove Japan's path to total war: after the 1930 Smoot-Hawley Tariff collapsed global trade, resource-poor Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931 and expanded into central China in 1937. Attempting to subjugate China placed the population on death ground, ultimately leading Tokyo into a desperate, multi-front offensive across the Pacific in December 1941. The Counterinsurgent Dilemma and Asymmetry of Will (46:38) Occupying powers that crush an opponent's conventional military frequently face an asymmetric "victory denial strategy" that prevents pacification. Paine highlights the occupier's operational dilemma: concentrating forces defeats regular enemy formations but leaves rear supply lines vulnerable to guerrilla strikes; dispersing forces to protect garrisons leaves isolated units vulnerable to massed conventional assault. George Washington leveraged this dual approach by pairing the Continental Army with local militias, just as Chinese Nationalist and Communist forces combined regular defense with guerrilla attacks to bog down Imperial Japan after 1937. This endurance disparity stems from the "value of the object." For an indigenous population defending its homeland, the political objective is existential, enabling them to absorb immense suffering and casualties over decades. For a foreign expeditionary force, intervention remains a discretionary political ambition—merely a geopolitical "nice to have." As operational costs and casualties mount, the occupying power's domestic political will inevitably erodes. Geographic Sanctuaries and Fractured Mosaic Societies (48:58) Terrain, border length, and demographic cohesion determine whether conventional victory can be converted into lasting stability. In Korea, United Nations naval dominance along the coastline was neutralized by North Korea's 1,400-kilometer border with China, which provided an invulnerable Manchurian industrial redoubt. Whenever a conflict involves external patrons funneled through un-interdictable frontiers, protracted proxy wars become virtually unavoidable. Geography similarly explains the divergence between the 1991 and 2003 American operations in Iraq. In 1991, coalition forces liberated Kuwait along a compact 158-mile frontier. In 2003, pursuing regime change forced the United States to secure over 2,000 miles of porous borders surrounded by regional rivals—Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey—who could disrupt stabilization at negligible cost. Furthermore, Iraq was a fragmented "mosaic society" split among Sunni, Shia, and Kurdish populations harboring historical grievances. Dismantling the central Ba'athist apparatus without an underlying civic identity unleashed anarchic sectarian warfare, confirming Paine's observation that toppling a regime leaves the conqueror entirely responsible for governing the resulting collapse. Paine concludes that avoiding military quagmires requires rigorous pre-war analysis: aligning military means strictly with limited political ends, evaluating the adversary's existential commitment versus one's own discretionary interests, and recognizing when hostile borders and external sanctuaries make decisive victory unattainable.

精炼阅读摘要

历史学者Sarah Paine指出，发动战争往往轻而易举，但终结战争却极为艰难；能否成功退出战争，取决于能否设定清晰有限的政治目标、准确判断进攻与胜利的顶点，以及防范战事演变为大国升级或陷入持久的非对称消耗战。有限目标与胜利顶点的抉择 (0:03) Paine认为，判断战争胜负的标准是政治目标是否达成，而非战术战役的胜负。在日俄战争（1904–1905）中，日本在人口、领土、资源与军力均居绝对劣势的情况下，设定了驱逐俄国在满洲势力并确立对朝鲜支配权的有限目标。依据克劳塞维茨的理论，进攻方在达到相对优势最大化的“胜利顶点”时退出最为理想；如果超越顶点继续推进，反而会招致第三方干预或灾难性反噬。日本在沙皇俄国内部爆发1905年革命（血腥星期日）、奉天会战人力消耗殆尽但借到战债、对马海战全歼俄国波罗的海舰队，以及占领库页岛获得谈判筹码后，清醒意识到国内人力已见底而俄国仍有庞大欧洲后备军，遂迅速通过哈佛大学校友渠道启动预先规划的外交退出路线，请求美国总统Theodore Roosevelt调停，最终在朴茨茅斯和约中不仅实现了预定目标，还获得了南满铁路、旅顺基地及库页岛南部。相比之下，俄国因将庞大资金倾注于远东而牺牲了欧洲本土铁路建设，导致一战期间首都食品供应崩溃并最终葬送罗曼诺夫王朝，体现了目标不明与透支国力的惨重机会成本。死地困境与无限战争的升级陷阱 (34:48) 当交战方将有限战争升级为旨在政权更迭的无限战争时，往往会把对手逼入孙子所谓的“死地”。置身死地的防御方因面临灭亡威胁而爆发出极端的抵抗意志，使侵略者的征服成本呈几何级数攀升。在朝鲜战争中，金日成最初试图通过常规进攻迅速统一半岛，却引来了美军与联合国军的直接干预；随后麦克阿瑟在仁川登陆后放弃在三八线见好就收，转而向鸭绿江推进试图彻底消灭北朝鲜政权，同样冲过了胜利顶点，招致中国的大规模参战。类似的情形也出现在20世纪30年代的日本，日本在因美国《斯穆特-霍利关税法》等保护主义政策被切断国际贸易后侵占满洲，随后在1937年全面侵华，将中国各派系逼入死地走向联合抗日；为切断蒋介石政权的外援，日本又孤注一掷将战火扩大至整个太平洋并偷袭珍珠港。在现代俄乌冲突中，Paine指出普京试图消灭乌克兰主权的无限目标同样将乌克兰人置于死地，激发了顽强的抵抗意志，令速胜论彻底破产。战火外溢与多国结盟的目标冲突 (39:32) 区域战争往往具有演变为全球冲突的病态倾向，尤其是在战事旷日持久且大国利益相互纠缠的情况下。美国独立战争原本是北美十三殖民地争取独立的有限冲突，但英国试图彻底消灭大陆会议的无限目标使战争陷入胶着，给其欧洲宿敌提供了可乘之机：法国于1778年参战，西班牙于1779年加入，英国随后在1780年对荷兰开战，战火迅速蔓延至萨凡纳、路易斯安那、直布罗陀、西非及印度洋。最终英国经战略权衡认定北美殖民地经济价值有限，主动止损退出以全力保全加勒比海利润丰厚的“糖岛”。然而在第一次世界大战中，各参战国虽均设想打一场掠夺边界领土或海外殖民地的局部速决战，但同盟国内部目标严重撕裂——英国意在维持欧洲现状，法国意在夺回阿尔萨斯-洛林，俄国意在控制巴尔干，奥匈帝国则誓言压制塞尔维亚，德国追求全球殖民帝国——没有任何一个国家能够在不背弃盟友的前提下单独议和，导致战火无法遏止地演变为摧毁所有参战帝国的全盘浩劫。非对称消耗、马赛克社会与地理屏障 (46:38) 在常规战力落后的情况下，防御方常采取拒绝胜利战略，利用游击战将占领军拖入非对称消耗泥潭。在抗日战争中，国民党常规军迫使日军集中兵力，而敌后游击队则迫使日军分散驻防，使日军陷入既无法集中歼敌又无法确保交通线安全的二难困境。由于本土作战者视战争目标具有无限的生存价值，而远距离干涉者的目标价值是有限且自由裁量的，时间始终站在本土抵抗者一边。此外，干涉地区的社会结构与地理边界往往决定了战后秩序的生死：1991年海湾战争中，老布什依据第54号国家安全指令严格将目标限制在解放科威特，仅需守卫158英里的边界且由34国联盟分摊了超过500亿美元军费；而2003年伊拉克战争中，美军追求推翻萨达姆政权的无限目标，不仅要防守超过2,000英里的多国接壤边界，还必须面对沙特、伊朗与土耳其等邻国源源不断的低成本干涉。更致命的是，伊拉克作为缺乏统一国家认同的“马赛克社会”，中央安全机构一旦被砸碎，宗派、部落与民族矛盾立刻激化并引发教派内战，使占领军陷入无休止的维稳泥潭。战前战略评估矩阵的六大要素 (51:06) Paine建议，任何国家在卷入战争前，必须建立严谨的分析矩阵来审视局势而非寄望于一厢情愿。决策者应系统评估六项核心维度：其一，各参与方的政治目标究竟是有限的领土让步还是无限的政权更迭；其二，各方在面对不同对手时目标是否发生分化；其三，交战各方与第三方势力的战略诉求是否真正协同；其四，根据“目标的相对价值”评估意志与耐受力上的非对称性，辨明哪一方是在为绝对生存而战；其五，战区与边境的地理隔离程度，评估能否有效切断外部渗透；其六，防御方是否存在攻击方无法摧毁或无法触及的外部安全避难所（如朝鲜战争中中国东北的工业基地）。如果对手拥有牢固的避难所与源源不断的大国后援，外来干涉者几乎不可能迫使其屈服，战争必将走向漫长而毁灭性的流血消耗。 Sarah Paine通过历史案例强调，战争是服务于政治目标的手段，能否在战场得势时克制扩张野心并精准见好就收，是对大战略家最严酷的考验；一旦误将战术胜利当作战略终点、把对手逼入死地或忽视了地缘与社会构造的客观阻碍，局部冲突必将滑向无法终结的灾难。

Source quotes

[0:03] Sarah Paine: It's really easy to get into wars. It's awfully difficult to get out of them. And it is even more difficult to get out of them what you wished you could have gotten out of them. [10:03] Sarah Paine: 3,000 highly edible horses if they really want to stick around. [12:14] Sarah Paine: If you use it to mean important, you're actually not conveying anything. Important in what way? And for instance, I would use different words for a battle where the casualty rates are really skewed. I would use the word lopsided... Another alternative will be pivotal battle. [17:23] Sarah Paine: Clausewitz is using this to describe war termination where you're going at an enemy and you have no idea: is it going to act like a hammer or is it going to shatter? The question is whether the first shock of battle will steel the enemy's resolve and stiffen his resistance—which is what happened to Putin in Ukraine—or whether, like the Bologna flask, it will shatter as soon as its surface is scratched. [30:28] Sarah Paine: big buddies with an un-interdicted supply line [32:09] Sarah Paine: we're on a roll militarily, let's take the whole peninsula [34:48] Sarah Paine: death ground [34:48] Sarah Paine: world of hurt [48:58] Sarah Paine: the loaded diaper is yours [48:58] Sarah Paine: mosaic societies [50:16] Sarah Paine: are going to be involved whether you like it or not [51:06] Sarah Paine: relative value of the object [51:06] Sarah Paine: nice to have [51:06] Sarah Paine: that's where they live

Original transcript

[0:03] It's such a pleasure to be here with you [0:06] all. I'm going to talk about war [0:08] termination today. Good idea, right? End [0:11] these things. Turns out it's really easy [0:13] to get into wars. It's awfully difficult [0:15] to get out of them. And it is even more [0:18] difficult to get out of them what you [0:20] wished you could have gotten out of [0:21] them. So, I'm going to start by talking [0:23] about the Russo-Japanese war, which from [0:26] the Japanese point of view is pretty [0:28] much model war termination. Why? Let's [0:31] do this math on Russia and China back in [0:34] the day. Russia was a multiple of these [0:37] quantifiable measures over Japan by [0:40] territory, population, industrial base, [0:43] resource endowment, size of army, size [0:45] of navy. Russia and most of those things [0:48] is a multiple of Japan. And you got to [0:50] ask yourself, well, how did Japan win? [0:53] Good question. And I'll talk about it. [0:55] All right. So, here is my plan. I'm [0:58] going to start about talking about how [1:00] the Russo-Japanese war ended. Use it as [1:03] a model, but then I'm going to talk [1:05] about termination of other regional wars [1:08] because this war isn't a global war. [1:10] It's in regional war. Then I'm going to [1:12] talk about two pathologies. And one of [1:14] them is if your regional war escalates [1:17] into a global war, a real problem. This [1:20] is a great fear of the Ukraine Russian [1:22] thing today. If if it spikes up and all [1:24] of a sudden you get a global war out of [1:25] it. Another pathology is if you [1:29] conventionally defeat someone but they [1:31] don't give up, they wage an insurgency [1:34] on you. And what that is is a victory [1:36] denial strategy. incredibly uh costly [1:40] for the person being denied victory [1:42] because they're there forever and ever, [1:44] but it's even more costly for the one [1:46] who's waging this insurgency under very [1:49] difficult conditions. So that's the [1:50] overall what I'm up to. And in order to [1:53] examine the RussoJapanese War, as [1:56] promised, I'm going to give you some con [1:58] concepts and many of them are from Carl [2:01] Kazouitz. His concepts I'm going to [2:03] elaborate on are culminating point of [2:05] attack, culminating point of victory. He [2:06] has an image of a blown fa flask. I'll [2:08] get there. And decisive battle of the [2:11] war-winning battle and limited unlimited [2:13] objectives. And then I'll add in some [2:15] sunza, the great theorists from the east [2:18] on death ground. So that's what I'm [2:19] going to do right now. But before I get [2:21] into terminating this war, I think I [2:23] better explain what happened in the war. [2:25] So here you see a map. Manuria up there [2:29] is was and for a long time has been it [2:32] is Chinese territory. Uh what went on is [2:36] both Japan and Russia are interested in [2:40] in uh expanding empires into Japan into [2:43] the Korean in Peninsula, Russia and [2:45] Manuria. Russia had built a really [2:46] extensive railway system. You can see [2:48] some of it here coming down from Harbin [2:50] going all the way south to Port Arthur [2:53] where it had a big Mabel base because [2:54] that's ice free unlike Vladivosto which [2:58] uh closes up for in this period for [2:59] several months of the year. So Russia [3:01] had invested in all of these expensive [3:04] railway systems. And then the boxers, [3:06] the al Qaeda of their day, wanted [3:09] Westerners to leave. Big nationwide [3:11] rebellion in China. And part of it goes [3:14] on in Manuria. And the boxers are busy [3:16] tearing up these railway concessions. So [3:18] as you can imagine, Russia sends troops [3:19] to prevent that. But once the [3:21] rebellion's over, the Russians don't [3:23] withdraw. And the Japanese tried to [3:26] negotiate with them and said, "Hey, you [3:28] recognize our sphere of influence in [3:30] Korea and we'll recognize yours in [3:33] Manuria trade, right?" The Russians not [3:36] interested because their ideas, they're [3:37] going to get the whole thing and who [3:38] cares about Japanese anyway. Well, the [3:41] Japanese are looking at this and they're [3:43] like, "The talk the clock is ticking and [3:45] the Russians are procrastinating, [3:46] procrastinating." So, the Japanese [3:47] decide that they're going to sort sort [3:49] this out militarily. So what they do is [3:52] attack Port Arthur. And you go, well, [3:54] what are they doing with Port Arthur? [3:56] It's because Russia has its naval base [3:58] there. And if the Russian Navy is out [4:01] and about, Japan cannot protect its sea [4:04] lines of communication. And that's how [4:06] all of its supplies and troops go [4:08] between Japan. So it's got to neutralize [4:10] that navy. So they blockaded in Port [4:12] Arthur. But that also requires an army [4:15] by land to invest Port Arthur by land. [4:18] Japan only has four armies until the [4:21] very end of the war when it cobbles [4:22] together a fifth. So one quarter of [4:24] Japan's armies are stuck at Port Arthur. [4:27] But what Japan is envisioning to win [4:30] this war is to go up the railway system [4:33] towards Harbin fighting a series of [4:35] battles and that they're going to have [4:36] this big annihilating battle and then [4:39] the Russians are going to come to the [4:40] bargaining table. The problem is the [4:42] Japanese don't have enough soldiers to [4:44] do it. They really need that army that's [4:47] investing Port Arthur to come [4:49] concentrate with its other armies way up [4:51] north there. Okay. Therefore, General [4:56] Nogi, who is in charge of the siege of [4:59] Port Arthur, he's under tremendous [5:01] pressure to reduce the fortress. And he [5:03] does a series of uh frontal attacks. You [5:07] lose lots of people if you do a frontal [5:09] attack on a fortress. And he does four. [5:11] And eventually what he realized is in [5:13] order to get rid of the fleet, Japan has [5:16] got to have a high point which is called [5:19] 203 meter hill. And if you have spotters [5:22] up there and you also haul in really [5:25] really large caliber siege gun and Japan [5:28] doesn't have many of those, then the [5:30] spotters will adjust the line of fire so [5:33] that those shots will actually hit the [5:36] ships that are anchored in harbor. And [5:38] it takes a while for that to happen. uh [5:41] and uh lots of what Nogi is losing is an [5:46] army in the meantime. A lot of people [5:48] while this is going on, the decides to [5:50] send his navy from the Baltic fleet in [5:53] order to relieve the siege of Port [5:55] Arthur which falls and then instead of [5:59] reversing course he doubles down and he [6:01] sends all the rest of his naval assets. [6:03] So the big things are going around [6:05] Africa, the little things are going [6:06] through the Suez Canal and it's very [6:09] difficult for Russia doing all of this [6:11] and they wind up fighting on Japanese [6:13] terms and Tsushima and spoiler alert the [6:16] Japanese are going to sink that navy. [6:18] All right. So this war is a limited war. [6:21] What I mean by that is that each side is [6:24] fighting for limited objectives. An [6:27] unlimited objective is regime change. [6:29] Japan never intended to change the [6:32] overthrow the regime in St. Petersburg. [6:35] Not happening. Um Russia Nicholas II [6:39] initially thought he could invade Japan [6:41] and overthrow the Japanese government. [6:43] But he um rapidly learned that that was [6:46] not going to be feasible. So it's [6:47] basically getting the Japanese out of [6:49] Manuria. So both sides are fighting for [6:51] limited objectives. Japan's objective. [6:54] This is why when you def uh define [6:57] whether a war is successful or not, it [7:00] is not but whether you win all the [7:01] battles. The United States won all the [7:03] most of the conventional battles in the [7:05] Vietnam War and I don't believe that war [7:06] is registered as a win. It has to do [7:09] with whether you achieve the objective [7:10] for which you're fighting the war. And [7:13] Japan's objective is Russians out of [7:15] Korea. Well, they certainly got that [7:17] one, but they also get the southern half [7:20] of the Russians railway concessions in [7:22] Manuria, plus the naval base and other [7:25] things. So, boy, the Japanese have done [7:27] incredibly well. They got more than they [7:29] initially wanted. The Russians don't get [7:32] anything. They would have been much [7:34] better off never fighting this war. [7:36] Story gets worse. Another concept for [7:38] you, opportunity costs. If Russia spends [7:41] money on this war, it means it's not [7:43] spending all that money in say doing [7:45] something useful, which would be [7:46] expanding its railway system in European [7:49] Russia that would have been really [7:51] helpful fighting World War I. And [7:53] Nicholas II is going to lose that war [7:55] and as a result, he and his family are [7:57] going to be wound up shot in a Siberian [7:59] basement, right? And the the whole [8:02] Romanov dynasty is going to be done. Uh [8:04] he's going to go down to food riots, [8:06] which has to do with getting food to St. [8:08] Petersburg. uh if you've done railways [8:11] in the right thing right places so that [8:13] allies could supply you you might have [8:14] had a different outcome so it the [8:16] opportunity costs are huge all right to [8:19] more terminology that I promised you [8:21] from clauswoods I'm going to give you [8:23] two terms colony point of attack colony [8:26] point of victory they're paired [8:28] according to clauswoods most attacks [8:30] only lead up to the point where their [8:31] remaining strengths is just enough to [8:33] maintain the defense and wait for peace [8:35] so he's talking about calming point of [8:37] attack in terms of a battle or a [8:39] succession of battles which is called a [8:41] campaign. He says beyond that point if [8:43] you go too far the scale turns and the [8:46] reaction follows with a force that is [8:48] usually much stronger than that of the [8:50] original attack. That's what we mean by [8:51] the culminating point of attack. Go too [8:53] far you ruin yourself. So culminating [8:56] point of attack operational term uh [8:58] applies to a battle or succession of [9:00] battles. Culminating point of victory [9:03] pertains to the entire war. uh in a [9:06] battle it may be um I'm going to reduce [9:09] uh the fleet in Port Arthur, get rid of [9:11] it. That might be my battle uh [9:12] objective. That's not my war objective. [9:14] My war objective is Russia adamanturia [9:16] or something. In either case, if you [9:18] don't go far enough, uh you don't reach [9:21] your culminating point of attack or [9:23] victory. It means you could have [9:24] achieved more at acceptable costs and [9:26] you failed to. If you exceed the [9:29] culminating point, you've either assumed [9:31] risks and costs that exceed any benefits [9:35] of whatever it is you do and you're [9:37] probably weaker as a result. One of the [9:39] key indicators that you've gone by [9:41] beyond the calming point of victory is a [9:44] third-party intervention that may change [9:46] uh the nature of the war if the third [9:48] party is a big one. So those that that's [9:50] the term and then I'm going to apply the [9:52] terms and I'm going to start with [9:55] culmining point of attack and pick a [9:57] particular battle. Here's some choices [9:58] for culminating points. I'm going to [10:00] choose the uh Port Arthur for looking at [10:03] when is the culminating point of attack [10:06] for the battle of Port Arthur. Why? [10:07] Well, that's the one the battle that [10:09] starts the war goes on for nearly a year [10:12] and as a result of winning it, Japan [10:15] destroys Russia's fleet in theater. So [10:17] it's a significant one. So if you look [10:19] at um back to these frontal assaults [10:22] that uh General Nogi is uh sending one [10:25] after another because he's desperate to [10:28] uh reduce this fortress. And you're [10:30] going well when's the culminating point. [10:32] Uh one of the takeaways here is Nogi [10:35] loses about 45,000 men by the time he's [10:38] done with these frontal attacks. That's [10:40] the size of a Japanese army. Japan's [10:43] only got four armies. That's a lot of [10:45] people to lose. And here's why he really [10:48] wants this 203 m hill. It's just I think [10:50] it's interesting to look at it. So this [10:52] is from below, but if you're up there [10:55] and you have a spotter, you can adjust [10:57] the line of fire about what thing is [10:59] getting sunk there and what isn't. Once [11:01] they're uh they take 203 meter hill, it [11:04] takes another week to get the guns in. [11:06] And then if you look, it's like three [11:08] days. They sink everything in harbor. [11:10] And then the Russians scratch their [11:12] heads for about a month and then they [11:13] decide to capitulate. [11:16] However, if you look at all the food [11:19] they had there, the Russians, uh, they [11:21] could have gone on for at least another [11:22] month and probably longer cuz I look up [11:24] there and they got 3,000 highly edible [11:26] horses if they really want to stick [11:28] around, right? And what the Russian um [11:32] war plants had never considered is the [11:36] use of Port Arthur as a fortress in [11:39] being that it tied up tons of Japanese. [11:42] You're pinning a lot of Japanese assets. [11:44] And if the Japanese the Russians had [11:45] been a little more clever, they would [11:47] have thought of how to use that to their [11:48] advantage, but they didn't. So back to [11:51] the question, what's the culminating [11:53] point of attack? If you someone asks you [11:55] this analytical question and you can [11:58] pick various points there of what you [12:00] would want and I'm going to choose 203 [12:02] meter hill and say once Japan's taken [12:04] that that is the culminating point of [12:06] attack and but I'm also going to show [12:08] you an alternate way to answer the [12:10] question. It's about how you use [12:11] evidence coming to your own conclusions. [12:14] So if you want to do 203 meter hill is [12:17] the commoning point of attack the sort [12:19] of argument that you might make is that [12:21] the fleet and being there is key and [12:24] without the hill Russia no longer has [12:26] sanctuary for that fleet so it's going [12:28] to lose it. It's just a matter of time [12:30] but you could have a perfectly good [12:31] counterargument. Someone who has [12:33] completely different the thesis be up [12:34] there says no no no no it's really the [12:36] destruction of the fleet until you've [12:38] done that you haven't reached your [12:39] clinging point. And why? because the [12:41] fleet pinned so much of the Japanese [12:43] army and navy and the destruction of the [12:47] fleet is the operational goal. So you [12:49] haven't achieved it, you just aren't [12:50] there yet. And then you'll notice that [12:52] the rebuttals depending upon which way [12:53] you go are different. You don't want to [12:55] in the rebuttal repeat your main [12:57] argument. But I think it's really useful [12:59] thinking of things of arguments and [13:01] counterarguments about which way do you [13:03] actually think you would argue. Maybe [13:04] you come up with a different thing that [13:06] I haven't even got up there. But that's [13:07] one way of looking at it. Anyway, a [13:10] related concept that might help you with [13:12] culminating points of attack and [13:13] culminating points of victory is [13:15] decisive battle. And I'm going to use [13:18] the term the way Mao and Clausowitz [13:21] mostly used it. And here's uh [13:24] Clausowitz. [13:26] He said campaigns whose outcome have [13:28] been determined by a single battle have [13:31] become fairly common only in recent [13:33] times. So that's a campaign. It's not a [13:35] war. And those cases in which they've [13:37] settled an entire war are very rare. So [13:41] I'm going to use decisive meaning [13:43] warwinning battle because if you use it [13:45] to mean important, you're actually not [13:48] conveying anything. Important in what [13:50] way? And for instance, I would use [13:53] different words for a battle where the [13:56] casualty rates are really skewed. I [13:58] would use the word lopsided. And if I [14:00] use the word lopsided, you immediately [14:01] get it. One side lost a lot more people [14:03] than the other. Another uh alternative [14:06] will be pivotal battle. Port Arthur is [14:09] not a decisive battle. Other uh battles [14:14] follow but it is pivotal. Once that [14:17] happens, certain things are foreclosed [14:19] for Russia and certain things are opened [14:21] up for Japan and they're terribly [14:22] important. All right. So if you were [14:25] looking at this theater up there and [14:27] thinking about the Japan's slow crawl up [14:31] that railway in the direction of Harbin [14:33] which is where the east west and the [14:35] north south lines meet and you're [14:37] thinking about a culminating point of [14:39] victory not not just a battle but the [14:42] whole war you can ask yourself did this [14:44] war end before after or exactly at [14:48] Japan's cing point of victory. If you do [14:51] it exactly at the culminating point, [14:52] it's like Goldilocks and the three [14:54] bears. The parridge is just right. So, [14:57] here are some choices for culminating [14:59] points of victory. And I'm going to go [15:01] through five alternatives. One uh is the [15:05] implosion of the home front, which has [15:07] to do with the Russian revolution of [15:08] 1905. Another has to do with the big [15:11] land battle at the end, the battle of [15:13] Mukden. Another possibilities go, "No, [15:15] no, it's all about money and uh Russia [15:18] going broke." Another possible answer [15:21] would have to do with the big naval [15:24] battle, battle of Tsushima. And the last [15:26] one has to do with Japan taking some [15:28] Russian territory to trade back the uh [15:30] battle of Sakalene. So I'm going to go [15:33] through them each in turn and you can [15:35] come to your own conclusions what you [15:37] think the culminating point of victory [15:39] was for Russia. All right. One answer [15:42] will look at Russia's domestic politics [15:44] and say this place was one of the more [15:47] backward places politically in Europe. [15:50] Something's never changed. And the [15:53] people uh were becoming more urbanized, [15:56] more highly educated. They wanted more [15:58] political say. They had zero. And so [16:00] they started hitting the streets, right, [16:02] and demonstrating strikes and [16:04] petitioning the ZAR because they wanted [16:06] a legislature, which isn't outlandish. [16:08] Only three places in Europe didn't have [16:11] a legislature in this period, and that [16:13] would be Russia, the Ottoman Empire, and [16:16] Montenegro. And Montenegro isn't very [16:18] big. Uh, Japan had a legislature. So, [16:21] what's Nicholas's problem? Meanwhile, by [16:24] the end of the year in 1904, that war is [16:27] really not going very well, and Russians [16:29] are not thrilled about fighting in a [16:31] place that they can't even identify on [16:32] the map. So that reserves are rioting at [16:35] their that the places where they're [16:38] concentrating in European Russia to be [16:40] sent out to Asia and in European Russia [16:43] i.e. where the Zar lives reserves [16:47] um grossly outnumbered the regular [16:49] troops and this is scary numbers for an [16:52] unpopular Zar with an even more [16:54] unpopular wife. So when the Russian [16:57] people have a big demonstration that's [16:59] peaceful and they're heading towards the [17:01] Winter Palace to present a petition to [17:04] Thesar, he isn't even in town. His [17:06] troops panic and they open fire and they [17:08] kill a lot of people. And this severely [17:10] damages the credibility, the legitimacy [17:12] of the Tsarist government and uh makes [17:15] them look terrible. And so Nicholas very [17:18] shortly starts compromising and sets up [17:21] a very weak legislature. So, Clausuititz [17:24] has um interesting terminology has to do [17:27] with this thing over here, a bologn [17:29] flask. What it is is a flask that you [17:32] can literally use like a hammer and [17:33] hammer a nail. It's really strong, but [17:35] if you get to the inside of it and just [17:36] scratch it, the thing shatters. And [17:38] Clausitz is using this to describe war [17:42] termination where you're going at an [17:43] enemy and you have no idea is it going [17:45] to act like a hammer or is it going to [17:47] shatter? like question is whether the [17:49] first shock of battle will steal the [17:51] enemy's resolve and stiffen his [17:52] resistance which is what happened to uh [17:55] Putin and Ukraine uh or whether like the [17:57] baloney flask it will shatter as soon as [17:59] it surfaces crash uh good question and [18:04] uh it's um it's hard to know right in [18:07] wars assessing the other side will they [18:10] fight forever uh which is what the North [18:13] Vietnamese did or are they going to be [18:15] like Nicholas II So, uh, his personal [18:18] bologn flask apparently wasn't doing [18:20] very well. And he's an autocrat. So, in [18:24] where he lives, it's his decisions that [18:26] matter. And so, um, so when the autocrat [18:30] decides game up, it's game over. So, [18:32] that's one explanation. If you want to [18:34] say the reason, uh, the coming point of [18:36] victory has to do with this 1905 [18:38] revolution that Nicholas just gave up. [18:40] Another way of looking at say no, no, [18:42] no, it's the battle of Mukden, this [18:44] really large mad m battle. The Japanese [18:47] threw every last person they could throw [18:50] into this thing. They were getting [18:51] people who were too young to fight, [18:52] people too old to fight, and a lot of [18:53] people who were too tired to fight. And [18:55] even so, Japan could muster uh 125,000 [19:00] fewer people than could Russia. And [19:03] Japan was really counting on a window of [19:05] opportunity before the Trans Siberian [19:08] railway could really transport a lot of [19:10] people to the front. So if you look at [19:12] it, the beginning of the war, the Trans [19:13] Sarbarian could transport 20 between 20 [19:15] and 40,000 Russian troops per month to [19:18] the front. By the battle of Mukden at [19:20] the end, it's 100,000. It's a lot of [19:22] people. And if Russia had had this [19:24] carrying capacity at the beginning of [19:26] the war, it would have had uh numerical [19:29] superiority from beginning to end and [19:30] Japan would have been toast. As it was, [19:33] if you look at it, the beginning of the [19:34] war, Russia has something shy of a [19:36] 100,000 men in this Asian theater. By [19:40] the time you get to August, this is the [19:42] battle of Liaoyangish [19:44] just before you got almost 150,000 [19:47] Russian troops and this is 20,000 more [19:49] than the Japanese have. So now the [19:51] numbers are starting to change. And then [19:52] when you get to the next August, 1905, [19:55] this is a month before the Portsmith [19:57] Peace Treaty finishes the thing. Uh [20:00] Russia's got oh nearly 800,000 troops, [20:03] but it's only 40% of its army. whereas [20:05] Japan has sent every last thing there [20:07] and it's less than 700,000 and Russia I [20:11] think has 3 million troops total. Uh [20:13] Japan could have been in a world of hurt [20:15] if Nicholas II had stealed himself to [20:18] send to fight one more battle but they [20:20] didn't. The Japanese understood this and [20:23] therefore the but even before they uh [20:27] attack Port Arthur they have already [20:29] figured out their exit strategy and the [20:31] educate strategy is going to be [20:33] President Theodore Roosevelt whom [20:35] they're going to use to mediate the end [20:36] of the war. They're counting on [20:37] Americans being busy bodies. Yes. And [20:40] they calculated correctly. So what [20:43] happens is at this meeting ittoumi the [20:46] prime minister decides that he's going [20:48] to use vis viscount kanyo who is a [20:50] Harvard graduate and acquaintance of the [20:53] Roosevelt who is also a Harvard graduate [20:56] to contact Roosevelt about mediating and [20:58] then when the negotiations happen [21:00] they'll be conducted by another Harvard [21:01] alum which is Baron Kamura and so this [21:04] is all being set up in advance so that [21:07] at the battle of Mukden when Phil [21:09] Marshall Yamagatada knows he's [21:11] absolutely out of And uh this is one he [21:13] goes America card. It is time to call in [21:16] Roosevelt because here's Yamagata's [21:18] take. The enemy is never going to [21:19] request peace unless we've invaded [21:22] Moscow or St. Petersburg. Not feasible. [21:25] And he goes, "Look, first of all, the [21:26] enemy still has powerful forces in his [21:28] home country. We've already exhausted [21:30] ours. Second, while the enemy still does [21:31] not run short of officers, we've lost um [21:34] great numbers since the opening of the [21:36] war, and we can't replace them. So, we [21:38] need to be prudent." And here is the [21:41] chief of staff of the Manurian Army [21:43] agrees. If you start a fire, you got you [21:45] got to put it out. So, it's time to call [21:46] the the fire department over in the [21:49] United States to to uh end this thing. [21:52] Okay. All right. That's so that's [21:54] another possibility. Maybe you think [21:55] Mukden is it. But I'm going to give you [21:57] another another different culminating [21:59] point of victory, a financial one, [22:00] different instrument of national power, [22:02] not just military. Both Japan and Russia [22:05] depended on loans to fight this war. [22:07] Very expensive. But because Japan had [22:09] battlefield successes, the interest [22:12] rates go down and it gets cheaper for [22:14] them. Still expensive, but the interest [22:16] rates go down. And the last two loans it [22:19] secures after the battle of Mukden. So, [22:22] Japan has got itself geared. Uh it [22:24] doesn't have enough men to do it, but [22:26] it's got enough finances to do it. [22:28] Russia is broke. And uh this precedes [22:33] the war where uh the Russians were [22:35] already had had a recession the prior [22:37] year, bad harvest and that influences [22:40] government income in a bad way. And so [22:43] Russia is not doing well and then after [22:46] the battle of Mukden when Russia [22:47] absolutely needs another loan, no one [22:50] will take will pay for that loan because [22:52] they don't think Russia is a good bet. [22:53] And indeed after the Portsmith peace, [22:56] Russia then did raise a loan and it [22:58] needed that money simply to transport [23:01] its troops out of Asia back to European [23:04] Russia. So you could argue Nicholas II's [23:07] piggy bank had run dry and so he had to [23:10] call it off. Okay, now for a naval [23:13] explanation. If you don't like the other [23:14] ones, I got another culminating point of [23:17] victory for you. And it's this [23:18] incredibly lopsided naval battle. Russia [23:22] doesn't need to fight this battle. It's [23:24] got the Trans Siberian Railway and [23:27] that's how all of its supplies are [23:29] coming in. Nothing is coming in by sea. [23:32] Why on earth do you want to fight a [23:34] naval battle on Japanese terms when the [23:37] when the terms by land are getting [23:39] better by the day with Russia with all [23:41] the new troops they're putting in? Well, [23:42] Nicholas does it. Great. Nicholas, uh, [23:45] he loses his entire fleet and it it's [23:48] even worse than that for him. So, the [23:49] Japanese lose a total of three torpedo [23:51] boats, but they commandeer a whole bunch [23:53] of uh Russian ships. So, that the [23:56] Japanese fleet grows in size as a result [23:59] of this battle. I mean, how do you mess [24:01] it up that badly? Some smaller things do [24:04] make it back home, but they're basically [24:05] small and they're obsolete. So, go [24:07] Nikki. So, that would be u another [24:09] explanation. Maybe you think Tsushima is [24:11] the culminating point. Okay, here's the [24:14] final possibility is Sakalen Island. and [24:17] the Japanese take it. Apparently, [24:19] President Roosevelt said, "Hey, you [24:20] should take Sakalina Island. This is at [24:22] the very end because the Russians can't [24:24] do anything about it. It's Russian [24:26] territory and then you can trade it back [24:27] at the peace negotiations for something [24:29] you actually care about." And for [24:31] Russia, this is such a loss of prestige [24:33] to lose its own territory, let alone [24:37] given the racial um prejudices of the [24:39] time, they're losing it to an Asian [24:40] country, which doesn't suit Nicholas at [24:42] all. And for Japan, Sakaline's nice [24:44] fishing grounds. you can get great crab. [24:47] Uh but it's not it's not a central [24:50] thing. So, but you could argue that [24:52] maybe that was the thing that um bust uh [24:55] good old Nikki's Bolognia FL. So, who [24:58] knows uh why some countries fight on and [25:03] on uh and never give up. Often it has to [25:06] do with unlimited objectives when others [25:08] put them on death ground and then they [25:10] fight bitterly. uh what Nicholas uh II's [25:15] baloney flask definitely did shatter and [25:18] uh a decade later he is going to wind up [25:21] dead in a Siberian basement for losing [25:23] World War I and he was a devoted husband [25:26] a belove a beloved dad and incompetent [25:30] zar and it ended very poorly. So on the [25:33] culminating points of victory, it's your [25:35] problem. Which one of which one of the [25:36] five you want? The domestic implosion, [25:39] the big land battle, the financial mess, [25:41] the naval battle, or the territorial [25:43] thing at the end. Okay, that's Japan [25:46] model termination. And I'll get to a [25:48] couple more successes before getting [25:50] into the pathologies. To recapitulate [25:53] here on Japan, why I think it's a model [25:55] case of war termination. Look, they they [25:57] got their war objectives. It was Russia [26:00] out of Manuria. Japan gets Korea that [26:03] it's without a doubt it gets that. But [26:06] it it gets even better. They get this [26:08] big Japanese fear sphere of influence in [26:12] Manuria. Manuria is big. It's the size [26:14] of Germany and France combined. And [26:17] Japan gets the southern half of that. [26:19] And it's got this very expensive Russian [26:22] railway concession line in there plus [26:25] the naval base and all the equipment [26:26] that goes with that. Uh they do [26:29] incredibly well. And then they also get [26:31] the southern half of Sakalene Island. [26:32] They don't get the whole thing, but the [26:34] Russians are willing to trade them half. [26:36] And then it confirms a result of a [26:38] previous war, the first son or Japanese [26:40] war, 189495 when Japan had defeated the [26:44] largest land empire in Asia, China. It [26:47] confirms the result that Japan is the uh [26:50] dominant regional power of Asia. Okay, [26:54] Gulf won. even better results because in [26:58] this war the United States didn't even [27:00] pay for it. Hardly anybody died like [27:04] less than a thousand I think less than [27:06] 500. I'll get there. And given how many [27:08] hundreds of thousands of troops were [27:11] deployed, it's got to be a first in [27:13] military history. So to give you a [27:15] backdrop of what happened, Sodam Hussein [27:18] was broke because he's fought a big war [27:19] with uh Iran. And what he wanted to do, [27:23] and he did, he invaded Kuwait because uh [27:26] he wanted to eliminate his war debt to [27:29] Kuwait, but also to take over Kuwait's [27:32] oil fields because together Kuwaiti and [27:34] Iraqi oil fields in those days might [27:36] well have made Iraq the swing producer [27:38] of oil with a dominant position on the [27:41] oil market. And so that looked good to [27:44] from Saddam's point of view. In [27:46] unlimited wars, the policy objectives [27:49] pretty obvious. It's regime change. In [27:51] limited wars, it's really hard to know [27:53] because you have a whole continuum of [27:57] from the most minor thing possible to re [28:00] to regime change, which is unlimited, [28:02] but there can be huge disagreement of [28:04] where on that continuum you're going to [28:05] be. And most times governments won't [28:08] actually explicitly state what their uh [28:10] limited objective is. They're kind of [28:13] thinking maybe I get a little more. Who [28:15] knows? And it's very hard for military [28:16] officers because they don't really know [28:18] what the objective is. But in this war, [28:20] Bush Senior made it clear. There is [28:22] National Security Directive 54. He laid [28:25] it out and the United States was [28:27] successful. Yes, the United States and [28:30] the coalition partners forced Iraq to [28:32] withdraw from Kuwait. Yes, the Kuwaiti [28:34] government was restored and yes, the [28:37] lives of Americans were protected even [28:39] before the war because with the help of [28:41] allies, Americans got out of Iraq. And [28:44] these three things together did indeed [28:47] promote didn't create but they promoted [28:50] security and stability in the Persian [28:52] Gulf. If Saddam had remained in control [28:55] of co of Kuwait, uh less stability, less [28:58] security. So U. George Bush senior, he [29:01] got all those things. It gets better. He [29:04] didn't pay for it. This is what his 34 [29:07] allies did for him. Let's do the [29:08] aggregates. A, they sent 200 over [29:11] 200,000 troops. Okay. Hey, the United [29:14] States sends 700,000 small potatoes. Uh, [29:17] here are the big potatoes. They pay the [29:19] United States over $50 billion to pay [29:22] for all the US troops and other things. [29:25] Plus, they pay an additional 14 billion [29:28] to various coalition partners to help [29:30] them pay do what to do what they want to [29:32] do. So, the United States didn't even [29:33] pay for this war. Other people did. Now, [29:36] let's look at the casualties. The Iraqis [29:38] lost between 20 and 35,000 military [29:41] deaths and up to 3,000 civilians from [29:43] the bombing. Okay. Coalition forces, 392 [29:47] total deaths. Of those, most of them are [29:50] Americans. It's 258. I don't know of any [29:53] wars that have a million uh belligerent [29:56] where the uh deaths rate for one side is [29:59] this small. And here's what was going [30:01] on. Remember the Russo-Japanese war? [30:03] Russia was completely diplomatically [30:05] isolated whereas Japan had um an [30:08] Anglo-Japanese alliance. So Britain was [30:11] a silent partner for them helping that [30:14] thing war work out. Well, look at Iraq. [30:16] Talk about being diplomatically [30:17] isolated. Like all the rich countries in [30:20] the world plus all just about all of its [30:21] neighbors are are ganging up on them. So [30:24] here's the problem. In a situation where [30:27] you're going to face a massive [30:28] coalition, it just isn't going to go [30:30] well for you. Okay. Now for the Korean [30:32] War that doesn't go remotely as well as [30:35] the Gulf War, but uh at least you wind [30:38] up with the at one point and was a goal [30:41] which was just returned to the status [30:43] quo Annabellum as a divided peninsula. [30:45] But let's look at the geography. The [30:48] border between North and South Korea, [30:49] the land border is only 250 kilometers. [30:51] So that looks plausible if you're going [30:53] to fight in there. Then it's got all [30:55] these maritime borders. So if the [30:57] dominant naval power is coming in, which [30:59] the United States was, you can probably [31:02] blockade all of that and particularly if [31:04] the other power has no navy. If they [31:06] have a navy, it might be more [31:08] complicated, but if they don't, you [31:09] might be able to deal with that. And [31:11] that means you can put your aircraft [31:12] there and you can do shore artillery on [31:15] everybody. And the Korean railway [31:17] systems, a lot of them ran on the [31:19] shoreline of the peninsula. So you can [31:21] get all those things within range. But [31:22] here's the problem is that's big [31:25] northern border. The one with Russia is [31:27] pretty small. It's like 17 kilometers I [31:29] think. But China, look at it's like [31:31] 1,400 kilometers in and change. And [31:34] Manuria back in Ma's day was the where [31:36] China's industrial base was located. So [31:39] you're never going to isolate that [31:41] theater. Your enemy has big buddies with [31:44] an uninterred supply line. That's a [31:47] problem. And then it gets better. both [31:51] sides have big buddies. So, if you have [31:54] big buddies on both sides who are going [31:56] to pour in the aid, uh you're going to [31:59] have a war that's going to go on for a [32:01] while and a lot of people are going to [32:02] get killed and a lot of territory is [32:03] going to get wrecked. That is the story [32:06] uh the sad story of that setup. And then [32:09] the story gets a little worse. Unlike [32:11] the Japanese in the RussoJapanese War [32:13] who knew exactly what their minimum [32:15] objective was and unlike Bush Senior who [32:20] knew exactly what he was after in Gulf [32:22] one and Korea, the United States [32:25] couldn't decide do we want just half the [32:27] the peninsula like uh the the Gulf War [32:31] where we're just going to return to the [32:32] territorial lines prior to the whole [32:35] thing or if we're on a roll militarily [32:39] maybe we should take the entire air [32:40] peninsula the unlimited objective and [32:42] this waffling was really costly and a [32:46] claswood has a real uh comments about [32:49] this so his idea is the political [32:53] objective is always primary it is never [32:55] the military objective the United States [32:57] is going oh maybe we can take the whole [32:59] peninsula let's go for it that's where [33:00] you're letting the military objective [33:02] like why are you even in Korea what is [33:04] it you want to achieve here and [33:06] Klauswood says no other possibility [33:08] exists than than to subord coordinate [33:10] the military point of view to the [33:12] political. The degree of force that must [33:15] be used against the enemy depends on the [33:18] scale of the political objective on [33:20] either side. The political object, the [33:22] original motive for the war, will thus [33:25] determine both the military objective to [33:27] be reached like how far up the peninsula [33:29] you need to go and the amount of effort [33:31] it is required. And one of the reasons [33:34] this man is considered brilliant is [33:37] because he believed that the primary [33:40] discriminator determining what type of [33:42] war you're dealing with uh is not the [33:46] amount of effort like of how many [33:49] resources you're pouring into it. He [33:51] argues that no that that's about means. [33:54] What's key are the goals, your ends, [33:56] whether it's limited or unlimited. So [33:59] unlimited is regime change, limited is [34:01] something else. And here his comment, [34:04] wars have all degrees of importance and [34:05] intensity ranging from war of [34:07] extermination down to a simple uh [34:10] observation. So you got this long [34:12] continuum, but he believes on that [34:14] continuum ultimately there really are [34:16] only two types of wars, limited and [34:18] unlimited. Here's his take. War can be [34:21] of two kinds in the sense that either [34:23] the objective is to overthrow the enemy, [34:25] right? regime change to render him [34:27] politically helpless or militarily [34:29] impotent, thus forcing him to sign [34:31] whatever peace we please. That's an [34:33] unlimited objective. Or merely to occupy [34:35] some of his frontier districts so that [34:37] we can enex them or use them for [34:39] bargaining at the peace negotiations. [34:41] And these limited objectives, there's [34:43] much argument about where on this [34:46] continuum you want to be. And I think [34:48] it's helpful for the unlimited [34:50] objectives to pair this with Sunza much [34:54] earlier work by several millennia. [34:56] There's a concept of death ground. And [34:58] what's that ground in which the army [34:59] survives only only if it fights uh with [35:02] courage of desperation is called death. [35:05] Uh soldiers fight to the death when [35:07] there's no alternative. the idea if you [35:09] have an unlimited objective [35:11] that means at minimum the regime of uh [35:17] who that is on the receiving end of this [35:19] is slated for annihilation and then if [35:20] you have genocidal ambitions against the [35:23] population uh that affects them too and [35:27] people in that situation tend to fight [35:29] to the death and you've seen it in your [35:30] own lives in Ukraine where they have [35:33] defied all expectations uh of people who [35:36] don't get death ground the Russians have [35:37] put them on death ground and the [35:39] Ukrainians aren't giving up uh if they [35:42] possibly can avoid it cuz they're dead [35:45] men, many of them. All right, so [35:47] unlimited wars are conceptually simple. [35:50] It's regime change. Everyone can get [35:51] that. But executing them is really [35:54] difficult because you put people on [35:55] death ground and they fight uh with [35:57] incredible desperation. Then you can [35:58] transform uh a failed state into a a [36:02] lethal adversary. Limited wars are [36:04] conceptually difficult because you're [36:05] going to be arguing about what the [36:07] optimal a limited objective is going to [36:09] be and that's troublesome, but they're [36:11] much easier to execute, particularly if [36:13] you have a very limited objective. Maybe [36:15] your enemy doesn't regard giving it up [36:17] as too terrible. Anyway, to sum up on [36:20] this limited unlimited, because it's [36:22] counterintuitive, but it's really [36:25] helpful for analyzing wars. Um, an [36:27] unlimited policy objective generally [36:29] concludes with regime change. Uh the key [36:32] is that the defeated has no choices. So [36:34] yes, the United States kept Emperor [36:36] Hirohito around. The United States could [36:39] have executed him at the end of World [36:41] War II, but kept him around because he [36:43] was useful. He would sign things like [36:45] the Constitution and so that the United [36:47] States could implement its political [36:48] reform program and Hirohito gave it some [36:51] legitimacy. But it's an unlimited war [36:53] against Japan. A limited war is [36:55] something less and it means that the [36:57] defeated government's going to be [36:58] around. You're going to be negotiating [36:59] with them whether you like it or not and [37:02] uh they may come back to cause you [37:03] problems later. Okay, back to Korea and [37:07] culminating points. The culminating [37:09] point wasn't exceeded a victory wasn't [37:11] exceeded by just once. It was exceeded [37:14] twice. How does one do this? Here's how. [37:16] Uh Kim Sunung invades the South. And he [37:20] thinks if it's just a tusome that he can [37:22] win that thing. And he was right. He was [37:25] roaring down the peninsula. He looked as [37:27] if he had it all covered until he [37:30] triggered the third party intervention [37:31] from hell, which is when the United [37:33] States and UN partners got involved. And [37:36] then what was a civil war becomes a [37:39] regional war with potential to become a [37:41] global war and you're off to a [37:43] completely different race, much higher [37:45] costs. So, uh, he would might have done [37:47] much better doing a slow insurgency than [37:49] what he did. Okay. So, then it's the [37:53] United States's turn to go beyond [37:54] culminating points of victory. And [37:56] there's a whole story about the Chinese, [37:57] but I haven't got time for that one. Uh, [38:00] so MacArthur does his Inchan landing, [38:03] which is halfway up the peninsula, and [38:04] it goes really well. So his idea is, [38:06] hey, we're going to reunite the whole [38:08] thing, right? Because it's militarily [38:09] possible. It's like Clausitz has already [38:11] told you. It's the political objective. [38:13] It's not the military objective that [38:15] determines what you're going to do. Uh, [38:17] well, when he gets too close to the [38:19] Chinese border, the Chinese are in. And [38:21] now we're into a world of hurt uh of [38:24] they're sending hundreds of thousands of [38:26] people in and we got a completely [38:28] different war uh on our hands doing [38:30] this. And not too long uh before too [38:33] long MacArthur gets himself cashiered. [38:36] So uh I think it's worth uh thinking in [38:40] terms of culminating points of attack [38:41] and victory before wars dur during wars. [38:45] What might it be? What might it like in [38:48] the Ukraine war? What would it take on [38:50] either side to get a culminating point [38:53] of victory? Is it reachable? Or [38:55] culminating point of attack on different [38:57] campaigns. Is it even feasible to get [38:59] there? That they're helpful terms. Uh [39:02] but understand uh a key measure of [39:05] culminating a point of victory going [39:06] sour is when the third party intervenes. [39:09] Okay. The Korean War yielded a divided [39:12] peninsula at really high cost because if [39:15] you exceed the culminating point of [39:16] victory, you're you're one of the [39:19] measures is you're paying a lot more [39:21] than you had to. But the that that was [39:24] the minimum objective is keeping the [39:26] South Koreans around for and they they [39:28] are. But we've had troops there ever [39:30] since and it's expensive. Okay. Now for [39:32] the pathologies where starting with the [39:34] regional war that escalates into a [39:37] global war. Talk about expensive. [39:39] American Revolution. Think about it. The [39:41] 13 revolting colonies, they had no [39:44] intention of doing regime change in [39:46] London. So, it was limited from their [39:48] point of view. But flip it around. [39:50] London, however, wanted to get rid of [39:52] the the Continental Army and Continental [39:54] Congress. So, that would be regime [39:56] change. And so, the colonists fought [39:59] harder because they're on death ground. [40:02] The it's big theater. It protracts. And [40:04] it gives uh Britain's many rivals ample [40:07] time to consider their options because a [40:09] lot of people want to take Britain down [40:11] a peg in this era. So the French ally [40:14] with the colonies in 1778. Then the [40:16] Spanish ally with the French in 1779 and [40:19] the Britain attacks the Dutch in 1780. [40:22] So which what was a regional war becomes [40:26] a global war. The French attack [40:28] Savannah. The Spanish attack Louisiana. [40:31] The French want to work there trying to [40:33] invade uh England from the aisle of [40:35] white. The British are trying to fight [40:37] with the French at Ushant. And then the [40:39] French and the Spanish are attacking [40:41] British possessions at Jibralta, [40:43] Monorca. And the French, I guess, are [40:45] attacking British possessions Cape Verde [40:47] Islands off Africa. The British attack [40:50] French possessions at Mah and [40:52] Pondicherry in India. And there's an [40:54] awful lot of fighting going over the [40:56] really valuable stuff which are the [40:57] Caribbean theater because these are the [40:59] sugar islands in those days. That's [41:00] what's what's valuable. And the British [41:02] decide get rid of the revolting [41:04] colonies. They aren't worth much in [41:05] these in this day. And keep things in [41:08] the Caribbean. And so they reassess and [41:10] decide to bail. So okay, that's one that [41:14] didn't work out well for Britain. Well, [41:16] World War I doesn't work out well for [41:19] anyone. It just goes everyone at before [41:22] World War I thinks they're going to run [41:24] a little regional war and they're going [41:26] to poach some territory from somebody [41:28] else in Europe or on the basis of [41:30] whatever they do to them in Europe that [41:32] country is going to seed some colonies [41:35] somewhere else. That that's the plan. [41:36] The problem is everybody wants different [41:39] things even within an alliance system. [41:41] So Britain wants the status quo. No one [41:43] else does. France wants Alsas Lauren [41:46] back. It's what Prussia had taken for in [41:48] the FrancoRussian War. Italy wants more [41:51] territories on the Eastern [41:52] Mediterranean. Russia wants the Balkans [41:55] and it wants Catholic Austrahungary out [41:58] of the Balkans and Russia particularly [42:00] wants AustriaHungary out of Serbia, [42:02] which AustriaHungary has no intention to [42:05] doing because of Serbian nationalists [42:06] just off the Hapsburg heir to the [42:09] throne. So that's not going to happen. [42:10] So AustriaHungary wants more of the [42:12] Balkans. The Ottomans want more of the [42:13] Balkans. Germany just wants lots of [42:15] colonies. So what it means is that even [42:17] within alliance systems, objectives [42:20] don't align in this war. Primary [42:22] theaters generally speaking don't align [42:25] and everybody's off for different [42:27] things. And so you get these parallel [42:29] wars for different places. Well, if [42:31] everybody joins the party, the party you [42:35] start off with and the party you end up [42:36] with can wind up being completely [42:38] different things. And one of the reasons [42:40] nobody can settle is because within your [42:42] alliance system, you cannot come up with [42:45] a settlement that'll satisfy everyone [42:47] within your alliance, let alone satisfy [42:50] the other side enough so they'll give [42:52] up. And no one dares ditching their [42:54] allies in this thing because they can't [42:55] fight alone. So this thing goes on and [42:57] on. Okay. Another regional war that goes [43:01] up up and away is Japan's problems in [43:04] Asia. So back in the day uh in the Great [43:07] Depression, the original America [43:10] firsters wanted to protect American [43:12] jobs. So they they passed the Smoot Holy [43:15] tariff raises US tariffs through the [43:17] roof. Economists went to President [43:19] Hoover and said, "Don't do it because um [43:22] our trade partners are going to [43:23] retaliate and it's going to really hurt [43:25] trade globally. It won't help us." He [43:28] signs the law anyway. They retaliate. [43:30] tanks uh trade globally. But then uh [43:33] stop playing halfcourt tennis of just [43:35] what's going on in the US side of the [43:36] net. Let's look at the other side. Uh [43:38] other people are far more desperate than [43:40] the United States was. That other places [43:42] didn't have remotely our standard of [43:44] living back then. Uh it's deepening the [43:46] Great Depression. That's going to set [43:48] host conditions for someone like Hitler [43:50] to come to power. And in Japan, a [43:52] country which had long cooperated with [43:54] the international system, uh they'd been [43:57] founding members of the League of [43:58] Nations, which we couldn't be bothered [43:59] to join. Um they're looking at it and [44:02] going, "We're trade dependent and our be [44:05] our our best allies, trading partners [44:07] have just left us out in the cold. What [44:08] are we going to do?" They decided [44:10] they're going to invade Manuria because [44:11] they're going to practice utarchy, uh [44:14] independence. If they can have enough [44:15] resources within their own empire, they [44:17] don't have to worry about trade. So, [44:18] they go into Manuria. It's a regional [44:20] war. So far so good. And then they [44:22] decide they're gonna extend the program [44:24] to all of China. And that doesn't go [44:26] very well because now they've lo instead [44:28] of taking a very large part of China [44:30] away from the Chinese, which wasn't [44:32] great, now they're trying to take [44:33] everything away. And they're putting the [44:35] Chinese on death ground. And the many [44:38] bickering factions of China stopped [44:40] fighting each other because they [44:42] understood that Japan poses existential [44:44] threat and they fought Japan to a [44:46] stalemate. And uh the Japanese economy [44:49] is starting to tank as a result of all [44:51] of this. They're getting more and more [44:53] desperate. This victory denial strategy [44:55] the Chinese have got have got going. And [44:58] so this is when the Japanese decide, [45:01] okay, we're going to cut off all the [45:02] foreign aid going into the nationalists [45:04] and then surely they'll cave and we'll [45:06] take over China and that'll be good. So [45:08] Americans are just remarkably [45:10] selffocused on this Pearl Harbor. it it [45:13] the December 78 has to do with what side [45:15] of the date line you're on. But [45:17] basically, it's the same day, same [45:19] moment that the Japanese attacked Pearl [45:21] Harbor. They also attacked Malaya, [45:23] Philippines, Singapore, Wake Island, [45:26] Guam, Thailand, uh international [45:29] settlement in Shanghai because they're [45:31] trying to get rid of all the places that [45:33] might help uh the Chinese except [45:36] boomerangs because the the great power [45:39] is far from leaving Asia. they double [45:41] down bringing great power allies to [45:44] Shanghai. The United States, Britain, [45:46] Australia and New Zealand are all over [45:48] this fight. So it truly does not work [45:50] out well. So when you think about the [45:52] regional wars that really go up up and [45:55] away and turn into global wars, they [45:57] have certain commonalities. The regional [45:58] war itself involves a really large [46:01] theater where it's really hard to close [46:04] that thing off. So you get a uh the [46:06] intervening power gets frustrated [46:08] because it's hard to garrison the place. [46:10] Uh also as this protracts all kinds of [46:13] third parties have time to intervene and [46:14] when that happens you're really in [46:16] trouble. And then you know if your enemy [46:19] has friends expect more trouble and [46:22] particularly if you're going to try to [46:23] do an unlimited objective. You you're [46:27] going to have an enemy that wants to [46:28] fight forever. And then as you rack up [46:31] losses you're less and less willing to [46:33] compromise. So that's uh those [46:35] pathologies. So that was pathology [46:37] number one. And here's the last [46:39] pathology of you've defeated another [46:42] country conventionally, but they don't [46:44] give up. They send you uh this lethal [46:47] insurgency at you where you can never [46:50] stabilize anything. If you think uh [46:52] about Japan, uh this happened to them as [46:55] well. And this whole theater is useless [46:59] to them until they can stabilize it. [47:02] They don't want to be spending income [47:04] garrisoning at it. They want to be [47:06] generating income from the economics of [47:08] it all. Well, that's not happening when [47:10] there's a an insurgency going on. And [47:12] what happened is they fought a series of [47:14] conventional battles with the [47:15] nationalists who lost them, but always [47:17] reconstituted and kept fighting. But the [47:19] nationalists and the communists also set [47:21] up separate guerrilla forces. So this [47:24] puts Japan on the horns of dilemma. [47:27] Are you going to concentrate your forces [47:29] to fight the nationalist conventional [47:32] forces? But if you do that, you're [47:34] leaving the rear areas open to the [47:36] guerrillas. Okay? If you try to [47:38] stabilize the rear, then you've got to [47:40] disperse your forces to go deal with the [47:42] other problem. And then you're letting [47:44] the army, your enemy army do things. So [47:47] it's a very expensive proposition [47:49] pioneered by this country. This is what [47:52] uh George Washington and friends uh come [47:55] up with. So you have the Continental [47:57] Army forces the British army to [47:58] concentrate, but you have all these [48:00] militias all over the country. [48:01] Washington wasn't so keen on them, but [48:03] by the end of the war, he understood uh [48:05] the benefits of it. And it just it's a [48:08] cost imposition strategy. And then what [48:10] you're counting on another concept here, [48:12] value of the object. What is value of [48:14] the object? It means it's the value to [48:17] you of whatever your political objective [48:19] is in the war. And Washington's counting [48:21] on that the American value of the object [48:24] is higher than the British value of the [48:27] object. And that tends to be true. If [48:29] you live in theater, it's home. It's [48:31] existential. Value of the object tends [48:33] to be very high. If you're intervening, [48:36] the further away you're intervening [48:37] from, probably the lower the value of [48:39] the object. And so he's counting on [48:41] ratcheting up the p the cost high enough [48:43] so the outsider leaves. And this [48:46] strategy has been replayed on this [48:49] country multiple times much to US sorrow [48:52] was played in Vietnam, Iraq, [48:54] Afghanistan, where you know we [48:56] eventually call it a day. Speaking of [48:58] Iraq, the war that didn't go remotely as [49:01] well as the first one, the first one was [49:04] for limited objectives. This one's for [49:07] unlimited objectives. Regime change in [49:10] Baghdad. That part turns out to be easy. [49:13] But the problem when you do regime [49:15] change is the loaded diaper is yours, [49:20] right? Cuz now what? And here's what [49:23] really is going on. Iraq and neighbors [49:26] are mosaic societies. There all these [49:28] different peoples there. And certainly [49:30] in Iraq, primary identities seem to be [49:33] associated with ethnic identities more [49:35] than national identities. And if you can [49:38] pick a color on that map, the chances [49:40] are it might want to kill one or two [49:42] more colors on that map, right? And vice [49:44] versa. So when you're trying to build [49:47] state institutions, [49:49] very difficult proposition. In Korea, [49:53] Koreans do not have an issue about [49:55] national identity. They all agree [49:57] they're Koreans. The fight is over state [50:00] institutions. In these mosaic societies [50:03] where you haven't even got a national [50:05] identity, you are not going to be able [50:07] to build state institutions is [50:09] everyone's trying to kill each other [50:11] over the national identities. So it gets [50:14] worse in Iraq and this is something you [50:16] can know in advance. Okay, in the Kuwait [50:20] war, Gulf one, you're only dealing with [50:23] 158 miles of that border. in the taking [50:27] over the whole place, you're dealing [50:29] with over 2,000 miles of that border. [50:32] That's a lot of border to try to wall [50:35] off from interested parties. And oh, by [50:37] the way, who are the neighbors? Three of [50:39] them have real ambitions for regional [50:41] influence. Saudi Arabia, Iran, and [50:43] Turkey. They're going to be involved [50:45] whether you like it or not. And um it [50:49] often doesn't take that much involvement [50:51] to really set things off, right? [50:54] Sometimes a car bomb will do it. This is [50:56] a sacred Shia shrine, car bomb or [50:59] whatever, blow it up. It set off a big [51:01] sectarian war. It's um very very [51:04] difficult to stabilize these places. So [51:07] to conclude, useful questions to ask [51:11] before certainly before you get into a [51:12] war, but even an ongoing ones is take a [51:15] look at who's involved, who's [51:17] interested, and then this is where I [51:20] would get into my big matrix for me is [51:22] who's got limited versus unlimited [51:24] objectives. And visa v whom right is it [51:28] limited against several neighbors or all [51:30] neighbors or one is uh for instance [51:33] Russia has an unlimited objective visa v [51:36] Ukraine but Ukraine has a limited [51:39] objective for visav Russia and what what [51:42] does all this yield? Um what is the [51:45] alignment of policy objectives among all [51:47] these different countries? What how do [51:49] primary adversaries align by all these [51:51] different parties? relative values of [51:53] the object, for whom is it existential, [51:55] for whom is it nice to have? I would [51:57] wager that what happens in Ukraine is of [52:00] much more interest to Ukrainians than it [52:02] is to Russians. Right now, Russians have [52:05] suffered really large losses. So, that [52:07] is of interest, but uh for Ukrainians, [52:09] it would be more so because that's where [52:11] they live. Also, you want to look at um [52:14] geographic access, right? I pointed this [52:16] out with map of Iraq and also sanctuary. [52:19] Are certain places invulnerable to [52:21] attack? So you don't have much leverage [52:23] over them. But anyway, and is there any [52:25] asymmetries of this? What lines up? [52:27] It'll give you a sense of who can [52:28] actually align with whom and who can't. [52:30] So that is what I had prepared for you [52:33] this evening. And thank you for bearing [52:35] me out.