Victory disease happens when a nation, army or commander has previous military victories and falls for some combination of:

• arrogance, also known as hubris,
• complacency,
• established patterns of fighting,
• stereotypes of opponents, and / or
• ignorance of alternatives or refusal to recognize them,

and loses badly as result.

In each case, the attacker is led to believe in a sense of military invincibility, and comes to ultimate disaster. While "victory disease" does not automatically foretell failure, it is a strong indicator.

The term has applications outside the military world.

Concept in more detail

Victory disease is generally used as a term when a series of military victories leads to arrogance or complacency; usually the term is used retrospectively after this arrogance or complacency has led to a defeat. While a force that has been defeated recently will tend to analyze the reasons for this defeat and attempt to change its organization and tactics, a winning force will often blindly follow previous tactics, or even ignore basic rules of strategy due to confidence in their own superiority.

At the operational level, this can lead to an army going into combat without adequate preparation or with antedated tactics, or going on the offensive against a much superior force. At the political level, it can lead to a nation that has won a series of wars entering wars continually until it is exhausted. A related factor is the impact of logistics -- a series of victories can lead to battles farther and farther from the nation's homeland, which has the effect of weakening the available force by stretching out the supply lines and forcing the detachment of occupation forces.

On the origin of the term

The origin of the term is usually associated with the Japanese advance in the Pacific Theater of World War II, where, after attacking Pearl Harbor in 1941, they won a series of nearly uninterrupted victories against the Allies in Southeast Asia and the Pacific. Although they had planned to establish a perimeter and go on the defensive, their victories encouraged them to continue expanding the proposed perimeter to the point where it strained their logistics and navy. This culminated in the 1942 Battle of Midway, which resulted in a devastating defeat to the Japanese navy and the loss of four of their six aircraft carriers involved. The decision of Japan to initiate the war (against a larger country with a larger industrial base) in the first place could also be described as Victory Disease following successes in the Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945) and the Russo-Japanese War.

Examples

Examples abound; the next list is by no means complete:

• The Battle of Salamis in 480 BC during the Greco-Persian Wars, in which the hubris of Xerxes I led to a catastrophic defeat of the Persian Empire to the Greeks (see also The Persians).

• The catastrophic decision by Napoleon to invade Russia in 1812 in which a force of 610,000 French soldiers invaded, and about 10,000 returned, killing countless Russians as well. Napoleon's repeated victories in Central Europe had led him to believe that Russia would surrender after a few won battles, and made no plans for a sustained campaign or occupation in Russia.

• United States victories against Mexico and American Indians led Union forces to be over-confident going into the Civil War. Failing to update their tactics to match new technology, they assumed that superior numbers would give them rapid victories, and ignored plans for an extended war until after repeated defeats.

• Decisions made at and before the 1863 Battle of Gettysburg by the Confederates after their victory at the Battle of Chancellorsville during the American Civil War.

• The 1876 Battle of the Little Bighorn, in which Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer and his entire army were killed to the last man after assuming the Sioux were not capable of resistance.

• The catastrophic decision by Hitler to invade Russia in 1941, underestimating Russian military resilience and counting on the success of the tactics used in previous campaigns, such as the Polish September Campaign and the Battle of France. The German offensive in Russia literally froze, on December 5, 1941. For this ominous news on the Eastern Front, Japan's Attack on Pearl Harbor two days later doubtless provided an antidote, and it almost certainly led to yet another catastrophic decision. (see below)

• Hitler's 1941 declaration of war against the United States has perplexed historians, since Hitler was not obliged to declare war, either by treaty or circumstance. (The U.S. had not declared war, nor had it made any overt attack on Germany.) Overconfidence has been proposed as an explanation, since the war's turning point against Germany, the Battle of Stalingrad, was still one year away, and forcing the U.S. into a two-front war may have proved too powerful a temptation for Hitler to resist.

• The initial defeats suffered by the United States in the Korean War, when units reassigned from occupation duty proved incapable of resisting the North Korean advance.

• The United States's 1961 attempt to overthrow the government of Cuba by the Bay of Pigs Invasion

• The United States's persistent folly during the Vietnam War

• The crisis suffered by Israel during the Yom Kippur War. Israeli victories in the Six Day War had made them overconfident, and units on Israel's borders were unprepared for Arab attacks, although Israel narrowly avoided defeat.

• The 1993 actions of Task Force Ranger in Mogadishu, Somalia during Operation Restore Hope.

• The success of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States has been laid to Victory Disease, brought on by America's Cold War "victory" over the Soviet Union in the previous decade. Since World War II the Cold War had conditioned Americans to assume, that the major threat against it was the perceived aggressive nature of World Communism, as embodied by the Soviet Union. Thus, Americans had a blind spot for threats to its security from other directions, in particular from jihadi Islam, making them vulnerable to the 9/11 attacks by Muslim militants.

• The United States' relative complacency following their initial victory in the combat phase of the 2003 Invasion of Iraq. Some US planners had operated on the assumption that elements of Iraqi society opposed to Saddam Hussein would rise up in support of the invasion.

Quotes

"To secure ourselves against defeat lies in our own hands, but the opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself." — Sun Tzu, from The Art of War, Chapter IV, Tactical Dispositions,#2

"The enemy we're fighting is different from the one we war-gamed against." — Lieutenant General William S. Wallace, the U.S. Army's senior ground commander in Iraq

See also

Main links

• Groupthink
• Hubris

Minor links

• Communal reinforcement
• Confirmation bias
• Narcissism

External links and references

• US Army Professional Writing Collection on victory disease