The Economist - USA (2020-09-05)

TheEconomistSeptember 5th 2020 67

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n june 2014around 1,500 partisans of Is-

lamic State (is) attacked Mosul, a city in

northern Iraq. They were outnumbered al-

most 15 to one by government troops de-

fending the place. The result was a rout. But

not in the direction those numbers might

have suggested. In the face of the enemy,

the government soldiers ran away. Reflect-

ing shortly thereafter on America’s failure

to foresee what would happen, James Clap-

per, then Director of National Intelligence

(and thus America’s top spy) described a

force’s will to fight, or lack thereof, as an

unpredictable “imponderable”.

Many in the past have felt the same. Mil-

itary history is, as a consequence, littered

with disastrously wrong assumptions

about belligerents’ will to fight. America,

for instance, famously underestimated the

determination of Vietnam’s National Lib-

eration Front when it involved itself in that

country’s civil war in the 1960s and 1970s.

Similarly, in 1916, during the first world

war, Germany underrated France’s will to

defend its fortress at Verdun against what

the Germans hoped would be a war-win-

ning assault. Casualties in that battle ex-

ceeded 300,000 on each side.

Assessing enemy morale is crucial to

warcraft. Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, a polit-

ical scientist at New York University, reck-

ons human will matters enough for four

wars in ten to be won by what starts off, in

strict military terms, as the weaker side.

Behavioural scientists are now, however,

bringing the power of modern computing

to bear on the question. Defence planners

have long used computers to forecast the

results of conflicts by crunching data on

things like troop numbers, weapons capa-

bilities, ammunition supplies and body-

and vehicle-armour. The next step is to ex-

tend the idea into the area of morale, by

quantifying the psychological variables

that determine whether troops will flee, or

stand and fight.

One leader in the field of morale re-

search is Artis International, a think-tank

in Arizona that is supported by America’s

defence department. To understand better

what has been going on in Iraq, for exam-

ple, Artis’s researchers have interviewed

Iraqi-government soldiers, Sunni militia-

men, Peshmerga fighters (pictured) de-

fending the autonomy of Iraqi Kurdistan,

and also captured istroops. Participants

were asked about their willingness to fur-

ther their causes by doing various things.

These ranged from protesting in the street

and donating money to torturing or killing

opponents, volunteering as a suicide-bom-

ber, or even sacrificing one’s family.

Brothers in arms

The researchers charted participants’ re-

sponses on a seven-point scale of ascend-

ing willingness. The responses suggested

that, among other things, those who de-

clared themselves willing to sacrifice the

most were the ones who also seemed least

interested in material comfort and eco-

nomic prospects. The researchers then em-

bedded themselves with troops from the

interviewed groups (save the isprisoners),

in part to seek differences between stated

and actual willingness to fight. The bits of

action they witnessed, and post-battle

Military strategy

What motivates the dogs of war?

How to forecast an army’s will to fight

Science & technology

68 Brain-computerinterfaces

69 Findingbodiesinforests

70 Interpreting dreams

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