书评。诺兰（Cathal J. Nolan）的《战斗的诱惑》一书Book Review: The Allure of Battle by Cathal J. Nolan

书评。诺兰（Cathal J. Nolan）的《战斗的诱惑》一书

Book Review: The Allure of Battle by Cathal J. Nolan

图片来自Amazon.com

战斗的诱惑。诺兰（Cathal J. Nolan）所写的《战斗的诱惑：战争胜负史》（A History of How War Have Been Won and Lost）正是其副标题所承诺的。

我不认为自己是一个军事历史爱好者，所以我不能轻易评估诺兰在其主要主题背景下对（主要是欧洲）战争的介绍。

但诺兰的历史阐明了战争中的创新与其他地方的创新有许多相同的问题。特别是，知识的外溢效应非常重要。

诺兰这本书的大部分内容是一部欧洲战争史。贯穿这段历史的是一些主题。在这篇文章中，我想我将尝试把他的主要主题翻译成一个统一的战争模型。这样做，我是把一个更细微、更微妙的主题表述塞进一个简单化的理论盒子里。向诺兰致歉。

战争的模型

假设两方之间的战争可以被表示为一系列有偏见的掷硬币行为。正面我赢，反面我输。每一次抛硬币都代表一次特定的交战。

每次交战的 "掷硬币 "都可能是有偏见的，因为一方有更好的战术、技术、精锐的生命力，等等。

许多交战可能构成一场战役，而许多战役可能构成一场战争。损失会破坏军事资源，而一个国家只能在它能提供这些资源的情况下作战。

一般来说，大国可以提供更多的资源。

该模型的关键假设是这样的。

偏见会迅速消失，因此在不久之后，双方在交战中获胜的概率是相等的。

各国对偏见的程度和持久性有不同的看法。

第一个假设是知识传播的结果。卓越的战术被观察和复制。优越的技术从被俘的敌人那里解放出来，或者通过间谍活动被盗。这也是困扰那些想保留他们从研发中获得的 "优势 "的私人公司的问题。诺兰提供了大量的例子，

说明任何一方的 "优势 "都会随着其最佳想法的传播而被削弱。

第二个假设是相当平庸的。它只是断言，国家（或更具体地说，他们的领导人）不分享相同的信息或信仰。

这些假设有两个主要后果，它们贯穿了诺兰对军事历史的介绍。

消耗性战争

第一个主要含义是关于战争的长度和性质。因为交战的结果最初是有偏见的，如果一个交战方有足够大的偏见，它可能会在偏见被侵蚀之前击败一个更大的敌人。要做到这一点，侵略者需要在孤立的情况下形成巨大的军事优势，以防止知识扩散到敌人那里。这种情况会发生吗？

也许它可以。虽然这不是诺兰叙述的一部分，但这可以解释欧洲以相对较小的军事力量迅速征服其殖民帝国的原因。欧洲殖民国家与他们的殖民地隔离了几个世纪，在欧洲的战场上发展了强大的军事技术和战术。

最关键的是，这些发展与未来的殖民地隔绝，使得战争开始时积累了大量的军事优势。

在这种情况下，这种偏见似乎大到足以压倒军事资源部署能力的差异。

然而，在欧洲战场本身，答案似乎是否定的。

发展军事优势似乎需要军事交战来完善。

然后，这些交战成为传播有关优势战术和技术知识的工具。

诺兰列举了许多这种 "战中 "创新和学习的例子，从发现步兵必须在多近的距离内才能停下来并准确地打击坚固的目标，到发现二战轰炸机需要练习大规模区域轰炸来摧毁军事目标，因为它们是如此不准确。

"上帝总是站在大营的一边。"

除非在不寻常的情况下（如长期孤立），第一个假设意味着大多数战争很快就会演变成一场消耗战，双方交换损失，直到能够聚集较少军事资源的一方投降。

是的，可能会有幸运和不幸，但最终大数法则会确保双方在大致相等的条件下交换胜利和损失。

战斗很少是决定性的，而只是加速或延长了消耗战的时间。

最终，大国（或联盟）赢得了战争，因为它能承受更长时间的战斗。

诺兰很喜欢引用伏尔泰的话。

"上帝总是站在大营的一边"。

在和平时期，但继续发展新的技术和战术，在秘密战争游戏中进行练习和发展。

然而，这些数据是非常不完善的，因为完善军事战术和技术只能在实际战斗中进行。

在这一时期，由于缺乏关于这些新技术和战术在现实世界中如何发挥的良好数据，可能会使信念与现实脱钩。

随着对偏见的程度和持久性的信念与实际数据的规律相背离，最终会有一个国家变得过于自信。

它将发起战争，确信 "这一次会有所不同 "的（错误）信念。

他们将取得决定性的胜利，并避免了一场消耗性的战争。

在这里，想想长期的和平，最终导致了第一次和第二次世界大战的大灾难。

经验支持

明确地说，这是我对诺兰模型的解释，而且我进行了简化。鉴于我的兴趣，我可能比他更强调技术溢出的部分。

总之，这个模型是真的吗？

诺兰这本书的大部分内容是对欧洲战争历史的合理全面的复述，旨在为我上面勾勒的模型提供经验支持。

如上所述，我不认为自己有足够的知识来评估他的陈述。

但是，我计划在下次阅读同一类型的书籍时，将这个框架放在脑海中。

Matt Clancy

Matt Clancy

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Sep 5, 2018

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Book Review: The Allure of Battle by Cathal J. Nolan

Image from Amazon.com

The Allure of Battle: A History of How Wars Have Been Won and Lost by Cathal J. Nolan is precisely what it’s subtitle promises. I wouldn’t consider myself a military history enthusiast, so I can’t easily assess Nolan’s presentation of (mostly European) war in the context of his major themes. But Nolan’s history illuminates the ways in which innovation in war has many of the same issues as innovation elsewhere. In particular, knowledge spillovers matter a great deal.

The bulk of Nolan’s book is a history of European warfare. Running through this history are a number of themes. In this post, I thought I would attempt to translate his major themes into a unified model of war. In doing so, I am cramming a more nuanced and subtle presentation of themes into a simplistic theoretical box. Apologies to Nolan.

A Model of War

Suppose war between two parties can be represented as a series of biased coin flips. Heads I win, tails I lose. Each coin flip represents a particular engagement. The “coin flips” of each engagement may be biased, because one side has better tactics, technology, elan vital, etc.

Many engagements might make up a battle, and many battles might make up a war. Losses destroy military resources, and a country can only fight so long as it can supply these resources. In general, bigger countries can supply more resources.

The crucial assumptions of the model are this:

Biases rapidly erode, so that before too long both sides have an equal probability of winning an engagement.

Countries have different beliefs about the extent and persistence of bias.

The first assumption is a consequence of knowledge diffusion. Superior tactics are observed and copied. Superior technology is liberated from captured foes or stolen via espionage. This is the same problem that bedevils private companies that want to retain the “edge” they get from R&D. Nolan supplies copious examples of the tendency for any one side’s “edge” to become eroded as its best ideas are diffused.

The second assumption is rather banal. It just asserts that nations (or more particularly, their leaders) do not share the same information or beliefs.

These assumptions have two major consequences, which are woven throughout Nolan’s presentation of military history.

War of Attrition

The first major implication is about the length and nature of war. Because the outcomes of engagements are initially biased, if a belligerent has a large enough bias in its favor, it may be able to defeat a larger enemy before it’s bias is eroded. For this to happen, the aggressor would need to develop a substantial military advantage in isolation, to prevent knowledge from diffusing to the enemy. Does this ever happen?

Perhaps it can. Though it is not part of Nolan’s narrative, this can account for the rapidity with which Europe subdued its colonial empires with relatively small military forces. European colonial powers were isolated from their colonies for centuries, developing powerful military technologies and tactics on the battlefields of Europe. Crucially, these developments were isolated from future colonies, allowing a substantial military advantage to accumulate by the time war began. In this case, the bias seems to have been large enough to overwhelm differences in the capacity to deploy military resources.

However, within the theater of Europe itself, the answer appears to be no. Developing a military edge appears to require military engagement to perfect. These engagements, then, become the vehicle for diffusing knowledge about superior tactics and technology. Nolan gives many examples of this kind of “in-war” innovation and learning, ranging from the discovery of how close your infantry had to advance before they could stop and accurately hit entrenched targets, to the discovery that WWII bombers needed to practice large-scale area bombing to destroy military targets because they were so inaccurate.

“God is always on the side of the big battalions.”

Except in unusual cases (such as long periods of isolation), the first assumption implies that most wars quickly devolve into a war of attrition, where each side trades losses until the one able to muster fewer military resources capitulates. Yes, there may be lucky and unlucky streaks, but in the end the law of large numbers ensures both sides trade wins and losses on roughly equal terms. Battles are rarely decisive, but merely accelerate or prolong the war of attrition. It is eventually won by the bigger country (or coalition), which can afford to fight for longer. Nolan is fond of quoting Voltaire: “God is always on the side of the big battalions.”

during peacetime, but continues to develop new technologies and tactics, practiced and developed in secret war games. However, this data is highly imperfect, because perfecting military tactics and technologies can only be done in actual battle. During this period, a lack of good data on how these new technologies and tactics will play out in a real world may allow beliefs to become uncoupled from reality. As beliefs in the extent and persistence of bias diverge from the discipline of actual data, eventually there will be a country that grows overconfident. It will initiate war, secure in the (false) belief that “this time it will be different.” They will win decisively, and avoid a war of attrition. Think here of the long peace, that finally resulted in the cataclysm of World Wars I and II.

Empirical Support

To be clear, this is my interpretation of Nolan’s model, and I have simplified. I’ve probably emphasized the technology spillover part more than he would, given my interests. Anyway, is the model true? The bulk of Nolan’s book is a reasonably comprehensive retelling of the history of European war, meant to provide the empirical support for the model I’ve sketched out above. As noted above, I wouldn’t consider myself knowledgeable enough to assess his presentation. But, I plan to keep this framework in the back of my mind the next time I read something in the same genre.