Speaker: Wright Smith, Research Fellow, International Security Program
How do states balance the demands of multiple battlefronts at once? This seminar argues that states prioritize different theaters of a conflict based on a hierarchy of goals: first, they seek to avoid territorial losses; second, they seek to exploit immediate battlefield opportunities; and third, they seek to pursue their overarching strategic objectives.
Multifront war has haunted the nightmares of statesmen across history. These wars confront states with a multifront dilemma, forcing them to divide their militaries across different locations and raising the risks of military defeat. Despite the frequency and impact of multifront war, few scholarly works have probed how states fight multifront conflicts and how they identify which fronts to prioritize at different points of the war.
This project introduces a theory to explain prioritization in multifront war, and argues that the strategic pressures of multifront war push states to make decisions based on three goals: first, they seek to avoid territorial losses; second, they seek to take advantage of the most favorable battlefield opportunities that exist in order to seize whatever gains they can; and finally, they seek to pursue their overarching strategic goals. Using archival and published primary source materials, this project analyzes decision-making in Germany during World War I, India during the First Kashmir War, and Israel during the 1967 and 1973 Arab-Israeli Wars to show how the theory outperforms other theories in explaining the choices states make to survive and win multifront wars.
Admittance is on a first come–first served basis. Tea and Coffee Provided.
