Customer Reviews

Failing to Win: Perceptions of Victory and Defeat in International Politics

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This is a highly original, ground-breaking book, which I recommend to anyone interested in American foreign policy or military affairs. Johnson and Tierney tackle a new and vital question: how do we decide which country won in a war or crisis? After all, support for Bush and the War in Iraq hinges on public perceptions of how the war is going - so where do these perceptions come from? The authors provide a model for how we should judge the outcome, and then show how public perceptions deviate from this model due to psychological biases, expectation effects, and media and elite spin. Throughout history, from the War of 1812, to Dunkirk, Tet and Somalia, people have repeatedly judged defeats as victories and victories as defeats.

There was a time in the Post- Second War period, when the economies of Japan and Germany were booming, and that of the 'United States' foundering. For the first time certain people began to talk about 'who really won' the Second War.
Recently the enormously talented historian Niall Ferguson has reconsidered the First World War and argued it might have been better for all concerned had Germany won that War, as it might have meant that the Second World War would not have occurred.
These two cases point out not simply the fickleness of human opinion, but rather how judgment of 'who won the war' is complex dependent upon changing historical realities.
In this highly original work Johnson and Tierney try to shake us out of our most often misleading and simple perceptions of victory and show that determining the 'victor' in a war is a more complicated business than we imagine.
After engaging in a quite academic discussion of the military and political standards for determining who has won the war, they get down in chapter five of the work to specific cases. This is what Carlin Romano in his review in 'The Philadelphia Inquirer' has to say about their analysis.
of " the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Tet Offensive (a U.S. victory, they say, that went down as a defeat), the Yom Kippur War (an Israeli victory, they say, misunderstood as a defeat), the U.S. intervention in Somalia, and the current "war against terror" (a mixed picture in their view.)

In those chapters, Johnson and Tierney provide a huge public service by showing how perceptions of victory depend on such factors as divergent assumptions about goals, and about "before" and "after" points by which to judge progress."

The authors also are interested in stressing the importance of 'perception of victory or defeat' in regard to a Democracy's willingness to sustain a long war.
This is a work which will provide much material for thought for all those interested in the world and human situation. This unfortunately especially so as the West is presently engaged, or partly engaged in a worldwide campaign against Islamic Fundamentalist Terrorism , a campaign which to this point gives no sign of clear and final victory, and promises to continue for generations.

Authors Johnson and Tierney have done a good job at posing unasked questions about perceived war failures/wins, but the answers they provide are so predictable as to be useless. Do I really need to read nearly 300 pages to find out that political partisanship mainly colors the public's perception of whether a war is a success or not? If they are right, then the authors should have ventured how to de-politicize some wars or aspects of wars to bring perceptions in line with reality; and vice versa. And using a sports analogy of keeping score and fixing matches is too simplistic a model for their study. But buy the book - it will get you thinking.

A good idea, poorly executed: the analytical framework is superficial and treatment of cases shallow. The authors conclude that "leaders today... may be able to draw a political victory from the jaws of military defeat by highlighting illusory achievements." (p. 290) Yeah, sure. Just declare Mission Accomplished. The role of perceptions is indeed crucial, but cannot be reduced to Machiavellianism Lite. This is precisely the kind of thinking that leads to disaster.