The Marines, Counterinsurgency, and Strategic Culture

Know Thyself 31
are omitted? What does this group’s history tell them about “dangerous”
behaviors?
Perhaps one of the most fascinating areas of study concerning perceptual
lens is in the area most would contest as uncontestable: determinations
of victory and defeat. Victor Hanson is nearly lyrical in his portrayal of the
bloody exactness of the battlefield: “There is an inherent truth in battle. It
is hard to disguise the verdict of the battlefield, and nearly impossible to
explain away the dead, or to suggest that abject defeat is somehow victory.”
68 He is wrong. Victory and defeat are human perceptions that may or
may not coincide with the mathematics of the dead. Societal myths, national
ambitions, or historically inherited criteria may define for a military or a
society the standards of victory and defeat. Material outcomes—the territorial-
, technological- , and casualty- based victories measured by outsiders—
may not, in fact, be the primary determinants of success in the minds of the
relevant contenders. Dominic Johnson and Dominic Tierney investigate the
phenomenon of nations perceiving victory in defeat and vice versa by examining
a number of case studies in which an objective observer would have
come to an opposite conclusion than the adversaries did themselves. One
of these, the 1973 Yom Kippur War, was a substantial military victory for
Israel over Egypt and Syria by any material standard. Israel took out Arab
tanks, aircraft, and troops in ratios of nearly five to one and demonstrated
that its tactical skills were far superior to those of its adversaries. And it held
more territory than ever before by the end of the war. Despite all of this,
the war was seen in Israel as a distressing defeat, “a failure [just] short of a
catastrophe,” and became the source of “enormous disillusionment” in the
country. 69 The success of Arab forces in surprising Israel’s military establishment
and achieving initial victories was a near fatal blow to the credibility
of the country’s entire security apparatus. In sharp contrast, despite material
losses, Egypt’s Anwar Sadat was able to claim “the most glorious days
in our history” for his nation. 70 He had restored Arab honor by achieving
the impossible: a surprise attack that involved crossing the Suez Canal and
establishing a beachhead on the other side, losing only 208 soldiers in the
process. Egypt’s bold move had, in the eyes of Egyptians and many Arabs
across the region, redeemed the shame of the 1967 loss with a firm belief
that Arab states were “capable of fighting, capable of victory.” 71 In this case,
it was not the end of the war that defined victory but the beginning, not
material consequences but perceptions.
When dispatching its Marines, the cosmological perceptions held by the
American polity as regards what is possible and right- headed in the foreign
policy arena have had significant impact on the types of counterinsurgency
tasks the force has been asked to pursue. The Marine Corps’s own perceptual
lens has complemented more often than competed with general American
notions regarding nation- building and effective strategies for winning
states as friends. Patronizing perceptions about the capabilities and motives