When war loses it's purpose: Evil for Evil, by K.J. Parker (Book 2 of the Engineer Trilogy)

 This morning, we have another potentially timely topic as we consider Book 2 in K. J. Parker's Engineer Trilogy, Evil For Evil.  The first book in this series, Devices & Desires, was distressing, quite good, and a bad choice for what to read at this particular time in human events, but fuck it.  Once I'm in, I'm in.  Thinking through some of the larger issues in Book 2, we will focus on what happens when a nation at war loses sight of its goals.  I have argued that the commentariat's obsession with whether or not Israel is losing sight of its goals right now is wrongheaded, but that does not mean that long-term analysis shouldn't maintain perspective.  We consider K.J. Parker.

Here, then, is the very quick recap of Book 1, before we delve into Evil For Evil.  On a non-magical fantasy world, two duchies finally reach a peace agreement-- the Vadani and the Eremians.  Unfortunately, the Eremian Duke, while well-intentioned, is a bit of a moron.  He starts a war with Mezentia, "the Perpetual Republic."  While the Vadani and the Eremians are pre-industrial/middle ages kind of places, Mezentia is rather more technologically advanced and industrialized.  They do not have electricity or gunpowder (although that is coming), but they are clockwork engineers who can mass-produce war engines and other shit.  Combine that with the money that comes from their technology-based trading, and they can hire mercenary armies to overwhelm anyone else still trying to fight the Battle of Hastings.

Duke Orsea and the Eremian army get their asses handed to them, rather worse for the wear.  At the same time, a Mezentian engineer named Ziani Vaatzes escapes a death sentence for having built a clockwork toy that deviated from "Specification," because that's a death sentence among the Mezentines.  They're like that.  While crawling home, Orsea and the survivors of the Eremian attack on Mezentia pick up Vaatzes and grant him asylum.  Vaatzes starts building weapons for the Eremians, for the coming reprisal, but he has gears turning for his own convoluted plot.  He double- and triple-crosses everyone.  His war machines defeat the mercenary army hired by Mezentia to topple Civitas Eremiae, but then he lets a bunch in through the back door so that they can wipe out the Eremians, while he flees to the Vadani.  'Round the same time, the Vadani Duke, Valens, shows up to rescue the Eremian Duchess because he's in love with her.  He saves the Eremean Duke along the way, and Vaatzes, the end.  What the hell is Vaatzes playing at?  By the end of Book 2, that's still less than 100% clear, so I'll leave that question open for now.  In some twisted way, he wants his wife back, he wants to take down Mezentia, and he'll burn anyone to do it.

OK, Book 2.  Valens is somewhat more competent than Orsea was, but he just created a hell of a mess for himself.  By riding to the duchess's rescue, he put himself in opposition to the Perpetual Republic, doubly so by grabbing Vaatzes, who takes a position in his court.  That was what put a target on Orsea and Civitas Eremiae.  So, Valens is now in a world of trouble.

True, if Vaatzes had just build those war machines for Orsea and not double-crossed the Eremians, they would have repelled the Mezentines' mercenary army, but that's a hell of a "would have."  Valens is in trouble.  He poked the hornets' nest.  Mezentia cannot tolerate opposition, and they really cannot let Vaatzes continue spreading their scientific, industrial and engineering knowledge.  Valens is in trouble.

Can Vaatzes build shit for him?  Two problems.  First, their location isn't the same kind of fortress as Civitas Eremiae, and second, the Vadani don't have the necessary craftsmen to train up.  Valens can try an alliance with a tribe of the Cure Hardy (think Mongolians, but more urbane, with all linguistic irony) from across the desert, which requires marriage, and has its own complications, but ultimately, the only move looks like abandoning Civitas Vadanis, and ultimately trying to cross that desert to reach the Cure Hardy.  Point being, Valens is now fucked.

Along the way, though, his best strategy is to think through the Mezentians' perspective.  They have their own internal politics, and once a war starts, that creates its own factional politics.  Consider, for example, how distant Valens is from their original reason for going to war.  Orsea attacks Mezentia, and gets his ass kicked.  Respond?  In some ways, why bother when the attacker loses that badly?  The Eremians never even got near Mezentian forces.  Their war machines took out the Eremian army at a distance with no casualties on the Mezentian side.  No sane person attacks Mezentia.  Any response is just about a message, but there's a faction that says, do it, even given the challenge of attacking the fortress that is Civitas Eremiae.  The real issue is Vaatzes.  Once he starts talking, he lets out Mezentian secrets about science and engineering on which the Perpetual Republic needs to keep a monopoly.  That's the reason.

How divorced from that is Valens and his romantic gesture towards Duke Orsea's wife?  Quite.  And sure, Valens now has Vaatzes, but is the genie out of the bottle?  At this point, the rationale starts to shift.  The Vadani may be technologically back-asswards, but they have money.  They have silver mines.  Seize those silver mines in a war, and there's a reason, even if that's not the stated reason, nor the original reason.

Vaatzes is playing some fascinating games with those silver mines, understanding what is at stake, and so is Valens, but here's the real deal.  Within the Perpetual Republic, their DoD goes by the wonderful nickname, "Necessary Evil," (hence the title) and there are power struggles on the committee.  Those power struggles reflect shifting rationales for war.  Knowing this, Valens spends some time thinking he can wait out the power struggle on Necessary Evil, and if he can remove the silver mines from the table, maybe he can take away all incentive for war.  The pro-war faction may throw so much money without anything to show for it that another faction takes power on Necessary Evil, finds an excuse to pull back, and the Vadani survive by following the Taliban strategy.  Leave the capital, run, go nomadic, and wait for the domestic politics of your technologically, financially and militarily superior adversary to shift such that the newly dominant faction no longer has the will to fight as the rationale has shifted.

Observe.  The war starts because Mezentia is attacked, unprovoked, by an idiot Duke.  In the novel, the idiot Duke is mostly a good person, but that's what happens.  Mezentia might, in theory, walk away, but their economy rests on a certain monopoly, put at stake by the asylum granted to a guy now living with the Eremians, so the reason for war starts to drift.  Mezentia attacks, but they do attack the nation that attacked them.  They wipe out that duchy, but lose the traitor.  What then?  Keep going?  In order to do that, the rationale must shift, as the war itself expands, turning into an internal power struggle, while also being more about money, while the newly attacked duchy can only abandon its capitol and follow the Taliban strategy.

I did not select this book for the timeliness of these ideas.  I have been reading a lot of K.J. Parker lately, I picked up the first book in the Engineer Trilogy semi-randomly, and it is good, so I continue reading.  (OK, if I am honest, I continue reading most bad books because of a character flaw, but these are page-turners.)  Let us reflect, understanding that there is a third and final book, which I have yet to read.

Why fight?  Why continue to fight?  These are different questions.  Yesterday, I considered Musonius Rufus's arguments on self-defense, virtue, and how to respond when attacked.  To Musonius, an attack, indeed an injury is no true harm because only you can harm yourself, by acting without virtue.  I considered, and rejected the argument because were we to accept Musonius's line of reasoning, then there could be nothing unvirtuous about assault, which permits a world of absurdist violence so long as the violence is conducted for reasons other than a lost temper.

Why fight?  In consequentialist terms, one fights in order to prevent a worse outcome, and in deontological terms, one is permitted, indeed obligated to fight in defense of others.  If one accepts the premise that war is permitted and indeed obligated, yet only in defense and as a last resort, though, then those conditions must be stated based on an acknowledgement of how fraught the act is.  That decision, then, requires clear conditions for conclusion.  That requires a precise definition of goals, and a plan with contingencies stated in advance.  Where Mezentia goes awry, as it does by the end of Evil for Evil in a practical in addition to moral sense, is by allowing its rationale to shift.  Civitas Eremiae never mattered to them anyway.  Vaatzes?  His crimes, such as they are, were conceived within their bizarre moral framework, but once he escapes, consider the circularity.  The clearest reason the Perpetual Republic has for attacking Civitas Eremiae is to stop Vaatzes from spreading Mezentine trade secrets, which he only does because the Eremians know that the Mezentine army will attack.

And once Vaatzes escapes anyway, the war must spread, and the power struggle is inevitable.  The Vadani silver mines enter the picture, as Valens and his confrontation with the Perpetual Republic become another consideration.

Yet what were the original victory conditions, and did Mezentia achieve them as soon as Orsea's army was demolished?  Arguably so, with Mezentia not losing a single man.  Mezentia swatted a fly, with the problem being the circularity of Mezentia's coming attack on Eremia, and how that caused the Eremian need to turn to Vaatzes.  Originally, Orsea told Vaatzes to take his machines and shove 'em way back at the beginning of Book 1, on the advice of Miel Ducas, and were it not for the expectation of a Mezentian attack, the Eremians wouldn't have hired Vaatzes, while Vaatzes spreading that knowledge was precisely why Mezentia attacked.  This whole thing is mutually reinforcing, and through that process, the Mezentians find themselves in an ever-expanding war with shifting rationales, ultimately bringing the Cure Hardy into the fight, which is the very thing that has been scaring the shit out of the Perpetual Republic for years.  By the end of Evil for Evil, their own mercenary army terminates their contract after a fight with the Cure Hardy when it all spirals out of control.

What was the original objective, and when was it achieved?

Orsea was not a jihadist.  (Jihadists can only be killed, as they must be.)  He was an idiot, talked into attacking a stronger nation by bad advisors and his own stupidity.  An example had already been made of him.  All that for Vaatzes?  One guy?  Who could possibly have imagined that spinning out of control?  Or, in control, given that it's Vaatzes's Rube Goldberg machine of a plan.

There is a level of disingenuousness, dishonesty, and absurdity to telling Israel that it has lost its objective, and engaged in an action equivalent to the US attacking Iraq post-9/11, today.  Since there are dishonest people making such claims, one must be prepared to respond, but these arguments are next-level stupid.  Yet, one is on firm ground arguing that the US lost its mission in Afghanistan, and stayed too long.  Afghanistan is a forever-disaster.  From now until the end of human civilization, Afghanistan will be a disaster, or near enough as makes no difference to anyone alive today.  No one alive today can help them.  The underlying culture is the problem.  Some cultures work.  Others never will.

The US had an initial mission, which was to defeat al Qaeda.  The Taliban were never our problem, and never a fixable problem because the Taliban arose from a culture that we cannot fix.  Afghanistan is not, and never will be fixable.  What went wrong?  Losing sight of the mission and victory conditions.

If I can help you, I will.  If I cannot help you, I will not fight you to try.  You are on your own, to kill each other while I mourn.

Any country attacked must ask, what are our victory conditions?  How do we achieve them?  It is disingenuous in the extreme to accuse Israel, right now, of engaging in its own Iraq war, but engaging in any war without a plan or long-term specification of victory conditions does not lead to success.

The goal-- the victory condition-- for Hamas is the word that leftists and other useful idiots around the world keep using as a vicious and scurrilous accusation against Israel.  "Genocide."  Read the Hamas charter and it reads like a nazi pamphlet.  Kill all Jews because we are conspiring in secret, evil ways to run the world.  I am not going to consider the moral or practical question of victory conditions for the other side.  If you consider their perspective, you are morally lost.

I don't believe in genocide.  Hot take.  On a college campus, they just believe in supporting genocidal maniacs while accusing me of it.

Academia is done.  Put a fork in it, it's done.  It jumped the shark, it has ceased to serve a purpose, parents, send your kids to trade school.

But if one does not believe in genocide, then this is hard.  Netanyahu sacked an official who suggested just nuking Gaza.  Pause, for a moment.  Imagine what would happen if Hamas, or any Arab country, or Iran (Persian, and they're snobs about the difference) got nukes.  Imagine Hamas, with nukes.  Imagine a meeting in which someone says, hey, let's just set off a nuke!

What happens?  Netanyahu fired the guy who said it.  Hamas would do it and throw the biggest party in Arab history, with the only condition being that they don't blow up any historic sites, which they value more than human life.  Remember, their goal is to murder all Jews, and any Muslims they kill along the way are martyrs who go to paradise.

This is called an "asymmetry."

I am reasonably certain, at this point, that if Hamas got a nuke, and set it off in Israel, college kids and worldwide leftists would celebrate, and the international community would froth with rage if Israel fired a single bullet in response.

Asymmetry.

So what are the victory conditions?  Destruction of Hamas.  And then?

And then, remember that Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005.  Leftists and other assorted useful idiots have been describing it as "occupied" by Israel, but that's a lie.  Israel withdrew in 2005.  Yes, Israel doesn't let Palestinians into Israel.  Gee... I wonder why not!  There's the Rafah border crossing, with a wall there, but Israel did not build that.  Egypt did, because for all the posturing about how much everyone cares about the Palestinians, they don't.  None of the Arab countries posturing about the issue will take Palestinians in, because they fucking hate the Palestinians.  They think the Palestinians are barbarian nutjobs.  They just use the issue to attack Israel because they hate Jews even more.

Urban warfare, to collapse the tunnels, and fight street-to-street against Hamas.  This will be brutal, and Israel will take out most of Hamas, with a heavy toll on whomever else is there.

And then?

And then the mistake the US made in Afghanistan was trying to stay and rebuild.  We tried a kind of Marshall Plan.  Nice idea, right?  It made us the good guys in Europe, generally speaking, while turning Europe into the place it is today.  Of course, the US and Europe have a similar cultural root.  Greece and Rome.  Common linguistic roots, common cultural roots, and the Marshall Plan worked, by many tellings.

Afghanistan?  No.  There were the cultural distinctions, combined with the fact that we were outsiders, but imagine, if you will, Israel just destroying Hamas, and then trying a Marshall Plan.

Imagine, not the US, Britain and France rebuilding West Germany, but Jews setting up a government, after Jews fought back and obliterated the nazis.  Even that does not quite do justice to the question, because of how deeply ingrained jihadism is, and how deeply ingrained Jew-hatred is.  If you believe you have a divine commandment to kill all the Jews because you are following a prophet whose example was set by the personal beheading of 600 Jews of the Banu Qurayza, that's different.

But even so, could a Marshall Plan work like that?

No.

And therein lies the problem.

Victory condition: end Hamas.

And then?

KBB, "Discontinuous Spiral," live.  The studio cut is on Four Corner's Sky.