MISC> SOCIETY: Study Of History Indicates Iraqi War Will Last 2-10 Months
- From: Gleason Sackmann <gleason@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: NetHappenings <nethappenings@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2003 08:52:04 -0600
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Net Happenings - From Educational CyberPlayGround
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From: "Pete Weiss" <Pete-Weiss@xxxxxxx>
Sent: Thu, 03 Apr 2003 14:03:12 -0500
On Thu, 03 Apr 2003 13:25:24 GMT, in psu.public-info.news aem1@xxxxxxx
(A'ndrea Elyse Messer) wrote:
April 3, 2003
Study Of History Indicates Iraqi War Will Last 2-10 Months
University Park, Pa. - A statistical analysis of key factors in wars
fought over the past nearly 200 years indicates that the Iraqi war
will last 2 to 10 months, according to a Penn State political
scientist.
"While the media have given frenzied coverage to the
short-term ups and downs of the still-early war with Iraq, history
would never have suggested that the war would be as short as some
pundits predicted," says Dr. D. Scott Bennett, associate professor of
political science. "Rather, history reveals that half of the wars
fought since 1816 have lasted more than five months, with the average
length of a war being 17 months.
"Wars are rarely as short as the media wanted to make this war
out to be in its first days," Bennett notes. "A longer-term
perspective suggests that the odds always favored a significantly more
protracted war. In the absence of other stories to cover, many media
outlets have chosen to portray every advance and setback as a major
indicator of what the future holds. In forecasting the length of
Operation Iraqi Freedom, we would do better to look back at other
conflicts and compare government types, respective strengths of both
sides, battlefield terrain, opposing strategies and other variables."
The Penn State researcher is co-author of the forthcoming book
"The Behavioral Origins of War: Cumulation and Limits to Knowledge in
Understanding International Conflict" (University of Michigan Press),
along with Dr. Allan C. Stam, associate professor in the Department of
Government at Dartmouth College.
Since 1994, Bennett and Stam have been using data from the
long-term Correlates of War (COW) project to probe the causes of all
international wars, as well as crises that ended short of war. They
published their initial findings on war length in the paper, "The
Duration of Interstate Wars, 1816-1985," in the June 1996 issue of the
American Political Science Review. In this article, Bennett and Stam
conducted a statistical analysis of wars to determine what
characteristics influence their length.
Bennett says, "The factors included military strategies used
by the two sides, the terrain on which the war was fought, the
relative strength and technological sophistication of the two sides,
whether one side achieved surprise, the nature of the political
systems on each side, the number of combatant states (if there were
more than two) and the intensity of the stakes as viewed by either
side. Given that model, we can apply what we learned about the
relative weight of those factors and make a forecast of the length of
the current war."
The researchers applied similar factors from the current
Operation Iraqi Feedom to their model. "In estimating the length of
this Iraqi war, the critical feature is whether or not the United
States becomes involved in major battles of attrition and significant
urban warfare," Bennett notes.
The nature of the terrain is a critical part of any war, and
has a major effect on the expected length of war. When the terrain
consists of swamp, jungle or mountain - or densely populated cities -
the progress of attacking forces is slow, and defenders are able to
mount fierce resistance. In contrast, open terrain (desert, fields or
rolling hills) allows mobile attacking forces to move quickly,
surround and isolate defending units, and to strike easily visible
targets from the air.
"If the United States were able to fight the entire war in the
open desert, then our prediction of the war's length is 3-4 weeks,"
Bennett says. "However, the coalition forces have already had to turn
their attention to cities in Iraq, and indeed, Baghdad is the primary
objective. In a mixed environment of open country and urban terrain,
our analysis suggests that a war will last two and one-half months.
"Although the historic average war length is 17 months, and
with half of all wars lasting over five months, the United States has
a number of advantages that lead us to expect the war to be shorter,"
Bennett says.
The United States holds an enormous edge in both the size of
its military forces and the technology that those forces can bring to
bear. The U.S. also is focusing on using a movement or maneuver
strategy to break through Iraqi lines rather than fight attrition
battles everywhere.
"As long as the coalition forces can protect their supply
lines from Iraqi attack, they can bring to bear ground and air forces
on selected targets in a combined arms operation that maximizes their
technological and training advantages," Bennett adds.
To obtain the most updated report by Bennett and Stam, go to
this web site:
http://polisci.la.psu.edu/faculty/bennett/warduration.html
A'ndrea Elyse Messer
Public Information
April 3, 2003
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