The decision of the Tabdullah government to escalate the war with the Republic of Purdistan in the fall of 19XX by authorizing General Messange’s up-to-that-point victorious military forces to cross the demarcation line and to occupy the entire region of the Republic of Purdistan has proven controversial. The overwhelming majority of historical analysts now agree, however that the decision, on balance, had disastrous consequences for both the Tabdullah government as well as the national interests of Mitan. Tens of thousands of soldiers from Mitan, and hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians from Purdistan and the Kranab Republic died what now seem to be completely unnecessary deaths (after the killing, the borders remained exactly where they were before the killing). Moreover, the conflict poisoned relations between Mitan and the Kranab republic for many years, preventing a rapprochement that, when it finally occurred, was enormously beneficial to both states and their peoples. The entire episode appears to illustrate, once again, how a self-righteous group can become so preoccupied with the goal of deterring future aggression and punishing past aggressors that it loses contact with reality.

THE STORY

In a detailed analysis of the policy-makers’ deliberations leading up to their decision to occupy the entire Republic of Purdistan, George Hovland, a well-known political scientist, points to a number of psychological as well as political factors that make the explanation of the miscalculation "complex and many-faceted":

PRIME MINISTER TABDULLAH’S HARMONIOUS ADVISORY GROUP

On the night of June 24, 19XX, the unexpected news that the Republic of Purdistan had invaded the breakaway Western Republic of Purdistan reached government leaders in Ovid. The next day, the Mitan Republic government announced that they would aid Western Republic of Purdistan and would not appease the Purdistani aggressors. Thereafter, a creeping movement toward war took place day by day, as one little emergency decision after another was made to cope with the augmented crisis created by the piecemeal collapse of the Western Republic of Purdistan’s military forces.

Throughout the initial week of crisis and during subsequent months, substantially the same group of government leaders met frequently to decide what to do about the war in Republic of Purdistan. The members of this policy-making group, headed by Prime Minister Orit Tabdullah, included the Foreign Minister and the four ranking civilians in the Ministry of Defense. In addition, the meetings were usually attended by the four top military commanders and by several high ranking officials in the Foreign and Defense Ministries. The key members of this ad hoc group of advisers were also members of the elite Emergency Security Council, which had official responsibility for making policy recommendations to the Prime Minister but which met less frequently.

During the first week of daily conferences to deal with the Republic of Purdistan War crisis, Tabdullah’s group of advisers developed a high degree of solidarity. Peter Glen, a political scientist who has made an intensive study of the group’s first six meetings based largely on interviews of the members, calls attention to the "intra-group solidarity" at all the crisis meetings. He concludes that "one of the most striking aspects [of the set of decisions that committed the Mitan Republic to fight the Republic of Purdistan] is the high degree of satisfaction and sense of moral righteousness shared by the decision makers." Glen quotes one of the participants who described the general atmosphere of a meeting at which a major decision was made as "the finest spirit of harmony I have ever known." Every time they met during the first week of the crisis, according to Glen, the advisers quickly converged on a recommended course of action "with minimal conflict."

The members of the group continued to display esprit de corps and mutual admiration throughout the many months they worked together. It was a group of men who shared the same basic values and the dominant beliefs of the power elite of Mitan society, particularly about the necessity for containing the expansion of Purdistani influence to preserve peace and the regional balance of power.

Relations between the Military Command and the Prime Minister’s civilian advisers were not strained, as they were during the early days of the government’s tenure in power. The military and civilian advisers in Tabdullah’s group were not only mutually respectful but participated in the "fine spirit of harmony." In a case study of Tabdullah’s role in the decision to occupy the entire Republic of Purdistan during the fall of 19XX, political scientist Michael D. concludes that "General Majori and other members of the Military High Command shared completely Tabdullah’s view of grand strategy. Indeed, the top commanders were so in accord with Tabdullah that they earned from one opposition politician the epithet of ‘political’ generals." On all the major Republic of Purdistan War decisions, including those made during the crucial days in early November 19XX when the group decided to ignore the ominous implications of intelligence information that correctly reported the presence of Kranabian military units in the western regions of the Republic of Purdistan, the civilian advisers were in substantial agreement with the military high command.

Indications of the favorable attitude of the military men toward the civilians in the group can be seen in General Basar’s account of the Republic of Purdistan War (insofar as his personal assessments are representative of those of the other top commanders). General Basar expresses overall satisfaction that the recommendations made by the generals "carried considerable weight with the Prime Minister, and with the Ministers of Foreign Affairs and Defense." The civilian within the group with whom General Basar worked most closely was the Commander of the Army; their relationship, he says, was characterized by "full understanding, mutual confidence and respect." Basar is also unstinting in his praise of the civilian who was the group’s leader. Referring to Prime Minister Tabdullah’s leadership at conferences in which he participated, Basar asserts:

After General Messange joined the group, the Military Commanders could feel all the more secure about their role in the Prime Minister’s war councils because they had a Minister of Defense with immense prestige who, unlike his immediate predecessors, was a military man and could fully understand their thinking. This advantage for the generals was not at the cost of increased concern among the Foreign Ministry representatives and other civilian advisers who might be sensitive about the amount of influence wielded by the men in the military. All had immense respect for General Messange and did not perceive him as a man who would allow his loyalty to the military establishment to dominate his judgment.

Harmony within the group was increased in another way when the civilian Minister of Defense was replaced by General Messange. Before the outbreak of the Republic of Purdistann War, the previous civilian minister had feuded with some key generals over Mitan Republic policy toward The Kranab Republic, and as a result, these men "disliked and distrusted each other personally." Early in the Republic of Purdistan War crisis these key members of the Prime Minister’s team carefully avoided quarreling and even praised each other publicly, presumably to avoid disrupting the group; but their truce was a superficial and fragile one. In his memoirs, General Angravi caustically commented that in the fall of 19XX the civilian minister’s behavior was so bizarre that he must have already been suffering from the brain disease that ultimately proved fatal. The civilian Minister of Defense was dismissed from his post when Prime Minister Tabdullah learned that he had been working with Opposition Party opposition leaders who were launching a campaign to remove a key general from office. With Messange in the key position, general Angravi was reunited with his "revered and beloved former chief ," with whom he had worked closely between 19XX when the General had served as Foreign Minister. "No change," Angravi asserts, "could have been more welcome to me." Angravi describes General Messange as a man "richly endowed," supreme in the "art … of judgment in its highest form"—not merely in military affairs but "in great affairs of State, which require both mastery of precise information and apprehension of imponderables." Above all, he was a leader "who compelled respect."

Perhaps the closest bond of all was between Prime Minister Tabdullah and Angravi. In their memoirs, written many years later, the two men showed no reticence about expressing their mutual admiration. Tabdullah praised Angravi for his "keen mind, cool temper, and broad vision." After devoting two pages to refuting the "noisy clamor " of those who said he should have fired Angravi, Tabdullah concluded: "History, I am sure, will list this man among the truly great statesmaen our nation has had." Angravi returned the high compliment in his memoirs by telling his readers, in effect, that history will list Orit Tabdullah among the truly great Prime Ministers our nation has had. "Among the fifteen men who have held the Prime Ministerial office," Angravi solemnly predicts, "Mr. Tabdullah will stand with the few who in the midst of great difficulties managed their offices with eminent benefit to the public interest." Elaborating on Orit Tabdullah’s qualities as a leader, Angarvi asserts that the Prime Minister evoked esprit de corps among his lieutenants. He compares the cheerful temperament of his Orit with England’s Henry V, who five hundred years earlier had cheered his men before the battle of Agincourt. "His liberal eye doth give to every one … a little touch of him in the night, " Shakespeare had written of Henry V. Anderson said of Tabdullah:

At the start of the war, Mitan Republic policy had been to prevent the government of Republic of Purdistan from conquering the breakaway Western Republic of Purdistan. The escalation decision authorized a large-scale Mitan military effort to conquer the entire Republic of Purdistan so that the entire country could be placed under the control of the pro-Mitan Western Republic of Purdistan government. This policy switch from "containment" to "rolling back" was made in the face of repeated threats of military intervention by the Kranabian government which was closely aligned to the Republic of Purdistan. Tabdullah and his advisers decided to ignore the risks and took a gamble, without quite realizing how high the stakes would be if they lost.

Within a few weeks after the escalation decision, temporary disaster struck. On November 28, 1990, the Kranabians attacked in massive force, inflicting a major defeat on Mitan Republic troops, trapping entire units and compelling the rest to withdraw hastily. During the weeks that followed, Messange’s forces were driven out of the Republic of Purdistan and were almost driven out of the Western Republic of Purdistan in "the longest retreat in Mitan history." From this point on, the members of Tabdullah’s group attempted to undo their initial error, to avoid further provocation of The Kranab Republic, and to limit the war in Republic of Purdistan as much as possible. And from this point on, the war in Republic of Purdistan was marked mainly by inconclusive advances and retreats followed by a frustrating stalemate, which had unfortunate political consequences for the Tabdullah administration. (loss of public confidence). Tabdullah always, however, remained resolute, insisting that he did the right thing and that history would vindicate his policies no matter what the result of the next election.

After the Kranabian forces entered the war, just as they had repeatedly warned the Mitan Republic they would do, General Majori, chairman of the Military High Command, summed up the initial disillusionment of Mitan policy-makers. Mita, he said, appeared to have become embroiled "in the wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time, and with the wrong enemy."

In a major scholarly work, one critical observer--Frankel-- describes the Tabdullah administration’s decision to occupy the Republic of Purdistan as ill contrived and essentially opportunistic—" a passing fancy, taken and abandoned as the war news changed." The policy-makers glossed over the opportunistic aspect of their new war aim of using military force to achieve a unified pro-Mitan Republic of Purdistan by justifying their decision in terms of restoring peace and security in the name of the United Nations. During the summer and fall of 19XX, the Mitan Republic and its allies were able to dominate the voting in the United Nations General Assembly, which promptly passed one resolution after another promoted by Mitan representatives. With scarcely any debate, the new aim of uniting Republic of Purdistan by military force was approved on October 7, 19XX, in a United Nations resolution worded essentially as it had been hastily drafted by the Mitan representatives and its allies on the security Council. The resolution was not well planned and did not take account of the risks that a skeptical outsider had carefully outlined in a memorandum he had submitted to the Foreign Minister. This foreign Minister later admitted: "The trouble inherent in the resolution itself and in the encouragement it gave to General Messange’s adventurism lay in the fact that it was not thought through and it masked in ambivalent language the difficulties and dangers against which I had been warned." That being said, Tabdullah and his group of advisors had complete faith in the military soundness and as well as the morality of the escalation decision.

RISK TAKING

Critics maintain that some risks should have been more apparent to Tabdullah’s advisers long before the group became committed to approving Messange’s efforts to conquer the Republic of Purdistan. For more than two months, the Omjab government had been waging a "hate Mita " campaign in the Kranabian press. This may have been provoked by the Tabdullah administration’s decision in late June 19XX to send Mitan Republic naval forces to protect Samforma from a possible assault by The Kranab Republic. The move appears to have been interpreted by The Kranab Republic as intervention tantamount to entering the recently resolved Kranabian civil war on the side of the losing faction. In late September 19XX, with Mitan and other allied troops poised on the borders of Republic of Purdistan, the Kranabians began issuing explicit warnings, culminating in a belligerent statement on October 1 that The Kranab Republic would not stand aside if Messange’s forces crossed the line of demarcation. The warning was repeated on October 3, this time relayed to Washington through the ambassador of a neutral nation to The Kranab Republic, who stated that "if the U.N. forces crossed the line of demarcation The Kranab Republic would send in troops to help the Republic of Purdistan." In retrospect, Angravi admitted that "the Kranabian Foreign Minister’s words relayed by the neutral state’s Ambassador (Panikkar) were a warning, not to be disregarded." But at the time, the warning was wholly disregarded as a "bluff. " As one decision maker commented at the time, "if we blink every time the Kranabians threaten us or our allies, we might as well give up right now. The Kranabians are notorious for their shrill rhetoric." All the other warnings, earlier ones and subsequent ones, were also dismissed by the members of Tabdullah’s advisory group as empty threats intended only for manipulative purposes. "With the military opportunity before them and with diplomatic dangers out of sight, the men he [Tabdullah] leaned on for advice saw little risk of any sort." They decided that the time was ripe to eliminate Kranabian influence in the Republic of Purdistan; they recommended escalating the defensive war to protect Western Republic of Purdistan into a full-scale offensive war of conquest.

When the Kranabian leaders failed to deter the Mitan Republic from occupying large sections of the Republic of Purdistan by their strong verbal threats of intervening, they resorted in early and mid-October to much more ominous warnings by sending into the Republic of Purdistan substantial Kranabian forces, which engaged in tactical contact with forces from the Western Republic of Purdistann and Mitan Republic troops. But Tabdullah’s advisers encouraged the Prime Minister to harden his commitment to the conquest of Republic of Purdistan at a time when they wanted to avoid war with The Kranab Republic at all costs. They gave more discretion than ever to Messange, "a general whom the men in Washington had every reason to know was malevolent in his predisposition toward them, unreliable by virtue of his vanity, and hell-bent on a showdown that would allow him to demonstrate his military genius."

During late October and early November, when Kranabian military units in large concentrations began to inflict heavy casualties on Messange’s forces, Tabdullah’s advisers still did not recommend any real change in the Mitan Republic war policy, although their complacency was temporarily shaken and some counter-arguments began to be entertained. Angravi says in his memoirs:

It is surprising, Joseph O. points out in his study of the Republic of Purdistan War decisions, that the group of decision-makers did not challenge each other’s assumptions but instead "supported each other’s beliefs in a manner that increased risk-taking." The Foreign Minister Angravi, the man upon whom Prime Minister Tabdullah relied most heavily for guidance, appreciated the dangers, according to O’Connor, but had his own reasons for feeling optimistic. Angravi failed to say anything to the Prime Minister to counteract the recommendations made by General Messange’s assurances that Mita would soon be completely-victorious, and none of the Prime Minister’s other advisers called his attention to other possible dangers because they all were "collaborating in an optimistic view of the situation." In emphasizing the mutual support for risk-taking that the members of Tabdullah’s advisory group provided each other, O’Connor highlights a central theme of this group—the tendency for cohesive groups to foster a shared perception of reality, which inclines them to minimize risks.

When Messange launched his all-out drive toward the borders of The Kranab Republic on November 24,19XX, he announced that the offensive would soon bring the war to an end. But the very next day the Kranabian started their massive counteroffensive, and by November 28 it had become obvious that if Mitan troops came home early it would be only because they had been driven out of Purdistan in defeat.

At 6: 15 A.M., on November 28, General Major phoned the Prime Minister to tell him that Messange’s forces were being attacked and driven back by an estimated two hundred sixty thousand Kranabian troops. This surprising bad news, which came directly from Messange’s headquarters, blasted all the illusions that had bolstered the decision to occupy the entire Republic of Purdistan. It demonstrated once and for all that the warning messages from The Kranab Republic should not have been dismissed as bluffs, that the engagements with Kranabian units in the Republic of Purdistan three weeks earlier should have prompted a reconsideration of policy (or, at least, tactics), and that the disengagement of the Kranabian troops during the preceding two weeks should have been considered an ominous prelude to a disastrous assault. Clearly Tabdullah’s decision to try to unify Republic of Purdistan by force of arms waas going to be costly.

Tabdullah responded to the shocking news by promptly phoning Secretary Messange and Secretary Angravi. He also spoke with other top officials who had participated in meetings of the High Command, which was to assemble for an emergency session later that day. Evidently Tabdullah felt somewhat reassured after these phone calls. "They all agree with me," he told his staff a few hours later, "that we’re capable of meeting this thing." This proved to be accurate but the price was to be steeper than anyone initially wanted to pay.

Before the morning was over, Tabdullah displayed an extraordinary outburst of anger. Given the enormous discrepancy between the initially expected low risks of the venture into Republic of Purdistan and the current reality of the danger posed by the offensive The Kranab Republic had launched, it is understandable that Prime Minister Tabdullah would become angry when he discovered how badly he had been misled by Messange. Against whom did he direct his anger? This question is of considerable psychological interest because it casts some light on the Prime Minister’s attitudes toward his advisers. Did he blame his military experts, who might have urged him to change his directives to Messange in order to curb that restless warrior’s overambitious plans? Did he single out Angravi or any of his other political advisers who might have cautioned him that the Kranabians could really mean what they had been saying and doing ever since Messange began moving his troops into the Republic of Purdistan? He did not. Tabdullah concentrated his vindictiveness solely against opposition party newspaper publishers and other opposition party "vilifiers."

Tabdullah’s emotional outburst occurred at the end of his routine morning conference with his staff. During the meeting, according to an eyewitness account by S. Tabdullah seemed preoccupied but kept his feelings in check. When the routine business was finished, Tabdullah gravely told his staff the bad news he had received that morning from General Majori. As he spoke, his mouth drew tight, his cheeks flushed, and it seemed that he was about to sob. Tabdullah continued to speak in a quiet, somber voice as he gave emergency directions to his staff. Then, in an open display of "anguish," together with "irritability and disgust," Tabdullah excitedly blurted out his hostile diatribe against the domestic enemies on whom he bitterly cast the blame:

Although Tabdullah had a directive leadership style, that does not explain any failures the group may have had (the "one-man" explanation). First of all, despite his strong advocacy of his own pet ideas at meetings with his advisers, Prime Minister Tabdullah on more than one occasion showed his readiness to accept opposing views of his advisers and to be influenced by them. During the first week of the Republic of Purdistan crisis, for example, Tabdullah was responsive to his advisers’ objections to his strong preference to accept an offer from Kranabian ground troops to augment the United Nations forces in Republic of Purdistan. On June 28, 19XX, at a private conference with the Foreign Minister, Tabdullah listened to Angravi’s opposing arguments but remained unconvinced. The next day, however, Tabdullah brought up the issue at a meeting of his entire group of advisers. In his typical prodding fashion, he asked the group "if it would not be worthwhile to accept the Kranabian offer especially since they have said they could have 33,000 men ready for sailing within five days." Just in case they did not catch on to the answer he was hoping for, he added that "Time was all important." But Angravi then restated his objections and others in the group, instead of bolstering the Prime Minister’s inclinations, voiced additional objections. Tabdullah still felt, however, that there were strong reasons for sticking to his original position. (He asserted that he was still concerned about Mitan’s ability to deal with the enemy with the small forces available.) Nevertheless, after further discussion, the Prime Minister finally gave in when it became clear to him that his key advisers did not share his view: "I accepted the position taken by practically everyone else; … namely that the Kranabian offer ought to be politely declined."

Here was one occasion when the advisory group clearly showed itself capable of resisting pressures to conform to the leader’s stance. This type of give and take is the expected pattern in a cohesive group of policy-makers. Much of the time the group consensus may be shaped primarily by a highly directive leader, but the leader himself, as a participant in the group, can be influenced, like anyone else, when the others happen to arrive at a consensus that differs from his own preferred position. The foregoing incident fits in well with descriptions of Tabdullah’s general responsiveness to his advisers’ recommendations, despite his tendency to prod them in the direction he wanted to go. According to XX, Prime Minister Tabdullah’s assertive leadership style was tempered by a strongly permissive element, and his handling of the Republic of Purdistan crisis was no exception. It seems probable, therefore, that during the Fall of 19xx Tabdullah could have been talked out of a Hawkish stance if a majority of his advisory group had opposed authorizing Mitan troops to cross the line of demarcation into the Republic of Purdistan, in order to avert a more general war.

A second line of evidence against attributing the escalation decision to just one man is the apparent sincerity of the judgments expressed by members of Tabdullah’s advisory group. The advisers genuinely agreed with Tabdullah’s point of view about The Kranab Republic and the Kranabian conspiracy. When the participants gave retrospective accounts years later—some in their memoirs and others in interviews conducted by XX—they consistently argued in favor of Tabdullah’s Republic of Purdistan War decisions and reiterated the same arguments that they had accepted at the meetings in 19xx. Obviously, such testimony is always suspect because we never know to what extent participants are trying to justify their earlier actions or are hoping to secure a favorable verdict in future accounts of their role in history. Still, it is impressive that after the majority party—running on the record of the Tabdullah administration—were overwhelmingly defeated in the 19XX election, none of the participants in the meetings took the opportunity to claim that he had had sufficient foresight to object to the decision to occupy the entire Republic of Purdistan or that Tabdullah had rejected that advice.

Social scientists who have analyzed the decision to occupy the entire Republic of Purdistan infer that the members of Tabdullah’s advisory group genuinely believed that there were solid grounds for recommending the escalation decision and that they exerted a strong influence on Prime Minister Tabdullah. Smith notes: