Winning at War:

7 Keys to Military Victory throughout History

Christian P. Potholm. Lanham, MD:

Rowman & Littlefield, 2010. 281 pp. Intro. Notes. Index. $39.95.

Reviewed by Shaheen Ayubi

This exceptionally well-written work focuses on how to achieve victory in war when diplomacy is unable to prevent human conflict and warfare. Potholm presents an in-depth analysis of what he describes as seven key variables to military success throughout history. Drawing from historical battles and more recent ones, the author presents a conceptual framework characterized as the “Template of Mars.”

The seven principle dimensions of the template are: superior technological entrepreneurship, superior discipline, receptivity to innovation, sustained ruthlessness, the protection of capital from people and rulers, and the belief that there will always be another war.

Although there have been numerous studies on the nature of war, this book breaks new ground by providing an analytic construct that compares and contrasts success in war throughout time and space as well as across cultures and societies.

The introductory chapter illustrates its non-Eurocentric relevance. For example, each of the seven dimensions is applied to analyze the Mongols’ success in defeating their enemies. By using this particular case, Potholm claims that the template transcends the traditional categories of warfare between “East” and “West.”The subsequent chapters on the seven elements of the template are skillfully presented.

• In one, the author argues that societies eager to test new weapons and technology and incorporate their benefits into existing military practices and tactics are in a stronger position to win battles.
  
  In 1861 the British built new steam ironclads to replace their sailing vessels, reconstructing their entire fleet. Not only were they open to innovation, but they were also willing to integrate the new military technology into war craft.
  
  More recently, the U.S. Air Force has shown its willingness to implement new technology. The adoption of General Atomics’ MQ-1 Predator, a high-altitude flying drone, to strike targets in Afghanistan and Pakistan, has proved to be an extremely valuable weapon.

• Superior military discipline, the template’s second element, is crucial to winning wars. The side with the most training and discipline frequently succeeds against enormous odds. For example, the British won the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 against the larger forces of Spain and France solely due to superior discipline, which resulted in greater firepower.

• The third element of the template concerns sustained but controlled ruthlessness, from which, unfortunately, success has often resulted for those armies that have practiced it. During the Vietnam War, the brutal killing of Vietnamese civilians by the North Vietnamese contributed to the defeat of the Americans and the South Vietnamese; it broke their political will.

• The fourth element focuses on a society’s receptivity to military and integrative innovation.

According to Potholm, those who consider such innovation to be a positive cultural value—leading to weapons development, as well as tactical, strategic, and managerial changes in response to the changing international system—stand a better chance of winning wars.

The study claims that as a result of such receptivity, the Japanese in the 19th century were able to modernize by emulating the West and thus defeated Russia in 1905.

• Of the fifth element—the ability and willingness to protect capital from people and rulers—Potholm writes that it is essential for the military to have access to more rather than less capital for new weapons and training.

• The sixth element involves the centrality of a will to win.
  It was the superior will of the British that sustained them through World War II.

• The final element of the template addresses the belief that there will always be another war. Societies that are continually planning for the next war are in a stronger position to confront the enemy.

Potholm tests the templates’ applicability using the case of the decisive Nomonhan Incident between the Soviet Union, Mongolia, and the Japanese. Here, the template demonstrates which ingredients were responsible for both victory and defeat.

He closes the book by drawing attention to the utility of the template to a new type of warfare—terrorism and insurgency in the post-Cold War era. While the current terrorist model is transnational, decentralized, civilian-interspersed, and extremely violent, he argues that the present core of warfare has not been dramatically altered so as to make previous assumptions about war insignificant.

Overall, this is an outstanding book, its narrative clear, its research solid, and its conclusions sound. It is a fine piece of scholarship and essential reading for policy makers, scholars, and military leaders.

Dr. Ayubi teaches political science at Rutgers University and is author of Nasser and Sadat (University Press of America, 1994).

She delivered her paper, “Iran and Nuclear Terrorism,” at the Oxford Round Table, in Oxford, England, in July 2010.

Article Information

Magazine Volume: 

Proceedings Magazine - October 2010 Vol. 136/10/1,292 [1]

Footnotes (Bowdoin Magazine)

More:
Listen to Potholm discuss the book
during the Maine Public Broadcasting Network (MPBN) program,
Maine Things Considered, December 28, 2009.

Winning at war : seven keys to military victory throughout history ...