Initial victories do not ensure the war will be won. Rather, they arouse the most dangerous opponent: the deadly hubris of over-confidence.
War tops the long list of human recklessness for a fundamental reason: it hardly ever achieves the initial objectives of introducing the war. It takes a special type of human recklessness to mark down all the unfavorable possibilities that come from beginning a war and focus specifically on the one positive result in the belief it is inescapable, ensured, and so on.
Wars carry an especially heavy curse, that of long-lasting 2nd order results.
The decision to introduce a war needs to mark down bad outcomes and theorize previous minor military campaigns as “evidence” that the war will be won rapidly and with very little 2nd order results. (First order effects: actions have effects. 2nd order impacts: effects have repercussions.) Put these 2 pleasing assumptions together and you arrive at a third presumption: the war will be over before we understand it.
Therefore civilians make haste to view the preliminary fight lest they miss the all-too-brief enjoyment (First Battle of Manassas, American Civil War) or the contenders declare the war that started in late August will be over by Christmas (World War I). Sadly, both wars dragged on for over 4 years as the bodies and effects accumulated.
All sorts of contingencies arise in war as plans go awry. For instance, provides considered as more than ample for the expected lightning war run out as the war drags on, and there were no plans to resupply during the dispute. Opponents who were anticipated to run out of defensive ordnance handle to get resupplied, typically by ingenious methods the attackers neglected in their rush to comprehend the easy, quick triumph.
For example, when Israeli aircraft suffered major losses in the first stage of the 1973 war, the U.S. shuttled A-4 Skyhawk aircraft across the Atlantic by placing warship so that pilots might hopscotch the short-range Skyhawks to the fight zone in record time.
Those introducing wars tend to exaggerate their own ingenuity and forget that the fight for survival speeds up the resourcefulness of the challenger too. It also quickens acts of heroism and solidifies resolve. The Japanese aboard Imperial Navy ships steaming towards the island of Midway in June 1942 were surprised by American torpedo planes assaulting without fighter cover, attacks that were essentially suicidal given the low odds of success. All the American planes were shot down and not a single American torpedo struck a Japanese ship.
Possibly the ease of this small victory added to the hubristic over-confidence of the enemies, a hubris which when integrated with the myopic planning discussed above and the contingencies of battle pointed out above, left the cream of Japan’s providers exposed to an attack by American dive bombers. Three of Japan’s four primary fight providers were left burning hulks and the 4th was ruined within hours by secondary dive bomber attacks.
The U.S. Navy lost one carrier in the Battle of Midway. Japan lost the effort. From then on, Japan was on the defensive.
No one makes war films about logistics and supply lines. Moving provisions, fuel and ordnance to the front lines is tedious and undramatic. Yet if the logistical train of the army or navy stops working and rations, fuel and ordnance run out, the battle is lost and then the war is lost. War boils down to logistics, and the longer the supply lines, the greater the chance for disruption or damage of the materials by enemies. It ends up you need a 2nd army and/or navy to secure your supply lines– something those positive in quick triumph tend to neglect.
As the war drags out, the disappointed assailants turn to extremes of cruelty and damage in a futile effort to force a success. But all the excessive cruelty and destruction does is launch a thousand 2nd order impacts, typically including a hatred of the aggressors that lasts decades or centuries.
It’s tough to find a war that went as prepared and difficult to find one that did not release long-lasting second order results. Europe’s Thirty Years War (1618 to 1648) is instructional on virtually every count of war’s recklessness: every attack galvanized challengers, every new campaign bled the treasuries of the assailants dry, every wave of destruction set off a counter-wave of destruction till the tired contenders lastly concluded the victory they ‘d anticipated was forever out of reach and so they settled for peace rather than war.
Wars are begun with the assumption that the gamers and chessboard will stay as-is after the conflict, but this isn’t what occurs. Repercussions have consequences, and the gamers and chessboard change: some alliances enhance, others weaken and liquify, trade routes disappear and the weaker players are bankrupted by either the war or the occupation of the still-hostile opponents.
Absolutely nothing galvanizes opposition quite like naked aggressiveness and nothing galvanizes domestic opposition like assuring a remarkable little war that transmogrifies into a limitless pricey occupation, bankruptcy and defeat.
Human recklessness depends most greatly on human pride. It’s difficult to swallow one’s pride and state success as a transparent cover for leaving the quagmire. (A respectable peace and other threadbare fictions.) The expense of pride not only bankrupts the treasury, it also desolates rely on the assaulting country to keep its word and reserves whatever squabbles kept opposing nations from forming an unified front.
Initial victories do not ensure the war will be won. Rather, they arouse the most hazardous enemy: the fatal hubris of over-confidence.
The essential lessons originate from defeats, not victories. But by the time those lessons are taken in, it may be far too late to make use of them: the 2nd order impacts won.
This is a memorial outside an ancient town in the south of France. It is a normal village, maybe a few hundred homeowners. The memorial celebrates 3 young French civilians who were gotten and shot by German soldiers in The second world war for “criminal offenses” of resistance. 
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