The logic of war strategy

The logic of war strategy

I will not make the necessary digression to conceptualize the terms logic and strategy, it would take 90 pages.

The complexity of the interweaving between military logic and military strategy takes us directly to the paradox created by Max Weber about the ethics of responsibility and the ethics of conviction. The sociologist says that politicians need an ethic of responsibility that clashes with and subverts the ethic of conviction, because a part of society will lose so that the majority of society can benefit, and many unpopular and illogical measures for the population require courage from politicians to be taken on, such as punishing the city's population for three years with works that make life on that street a living hell, with huge holes, dust, blocking access to install urban equipment that will make life better for the population, or, if possible, with subway, water, sewage, waterways, telephone, electricity, optical cables, or even mandatory vaccinations, traffic lights, all of this bothers and makes governments frowned upon and hated.

A responsible leader does not always do what the majority wants and accepts, but he does it because it is necessary. This is the ethic of responsibility, collecting taxes, policing and keeping schools organized and disciplined, waking up early and maintaining laws, ordinances and municipal regulations. The good-natured populist politician prefers the easy way out of promiscuity and demagogy, of speeches full of promises and faculties.

The strategy of the two atomic bombs exploded on the heads of the Japanese was part of a sinister and perverse logic, but, of the logic of responsibility, it will never be supported even a hundred years later.

The surprise attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese and the sinking of hundreds of logistics ships with trucks, engines, parts, tires, bound for England by German U2 submersible boats in the Atlantic Ocean are part of the same logic of the sinister strategy in which it becomes useless to discover the enemy's secret plans, the leaders knew in advance of the actions and did nothing to prevent them, they only discreetly reduced the damage. If the enemy realizes that his strategic plans have been leaked, he manipulates the opponent's logic in the game of "I know that he knows that I know that he knows." According to this logic, there were never any Japanese prisoners in Mindanao, Indonesia, the Philippines, Sipau, or Okinawa, so the losses of American military personnel against the Japanese were one to one. The Japanese never surrendered. In order to use the secret information from the encryption machines, it was necessary to hide from the enemy that they had broken their codes, so there was no point in having broken their codes, the paradox of information and counter-information. Knowing that the Japanese never surrendered and that the invasion of Okinawa cost the sinking and loss of more than 800 American vessels and submarines of the American Navy, there was no alternative to atomic bombs. What kind of strategic logic led President or dictator Zelensky to bet on the fight against Russia with 6,500 nuclear warheads?

Roberto da Silva Rocha, professor universitário e cientista político