Today’s title refers to a description of the Spanish-American War used by John Hay, the American Ambassador to the UK in a letter to Theodore Roosevelt in 1898. Roosevelt had formed and trained the 1^st US Volunteer Cavalry and famously led them in a charge up San Juan Hill. Hay chose that description because he thought the war was very short (almost three months) and had caused so few casualties. [1]

National leaders have repeatedly failed to look far enough into the future when deciding that they could launch a war and that the troops “would be home by Christmas.” For a variety of reasons leaders have been convinced that a short sharp conflict could expand their power base. Operation Epic Fury (US/Israeli attack of Iran) is merely the most recent example, and both presidents are now beginning to rue their decisions, in spite of the US president insisting that the war will be over “soon; very soon.”

But this president is hardly the first to launch a war confident of a quick success. In 1812, with Britain struggling to defeat Napoleon, James Madison declared war on Britain. Thomas Jefferson famously declared the acquisition of Canada was a “mere matter of marching”. Wrong. Canada remained unconquered; Washington, DC, was sacked and burned, and Mrs. Madison’s elegant dinner party disrupted (oh my!). British redcoats ate her dinner (it was reputedly on the table), then set fire to the Executive Mansion. In 1846, President James K. Polk tried the same thing with Mexico.

This is hardly solely an American disease. On July 19, 1870, Napoleon III of Frances declared war on Prussia, because his generals told him that the French army could defeat Prussia, (which had just beaten Austria) and that a quick victory would restore his declining popularity in France. It was indeed a short war. Prussia destroyed the French at Sedan in August and by September laid siege to Paris. France not only lost the war; it also lost Alsace-Lorraine.

Without going into too much detail, I think the point is made that too often national leaders launch wars with what is now called a flawed “Theory of Victory”. This term is recent (and I’m not yet convinced I like it) but here is a simple definition: A leader must explain why a set of actions is expected to produce the desired outcome. Certainly, policy discussions often concentrate on inputs — troops, logistics, and timelines — without asking why those inputs should lead to success. Also, a plausible theory of victory may change as a war evolves, but it must still connect action to outcome, and too often this series of connections is either absent or unrealistic. Most importantly, we must constantly remember that the future is unknowable. Therefore, any theory of victory is not a prediction. It is merely a hypothesis, and it must be regularly and routinely tested (in much the same way that the final step in Mission Analysis is the constant questioning of whether the situation has changed fundamentally. For a refresher, see my post Fighting the Last War published June 2025.)

History has multiple (one might argue too many) examples of irrational optimism when a leader declares that a “splendid little war” will solve his nation’s ills. One is left to wonder why such actions continue to occur. Stupidity? Willful blindness? Hubris?

In his 1944 book, Why Don’t We Learn from History? Sir Basil Liddell Hart argued strongly that history provides universal experience far exceeding any individual’s lifespan. He contended that with two millennia of examples to guide us failing to understand the past is inexcusable for anyone who can read and write. This sentiment was not new. He had made a similar argument in a previous book published that same year. In Thoughts on War Liddell Hart wrote: “There are two thousand years of experience to tell us that the only thing harder than getting a new idea into the military mind is to get an old idea out.”

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[1] Roughly 5,500 Americans died during the war. Further, the war triggered the Philippine–American War (1899–1902), a much bloodier conflict in which tens of thousands of Filipinos and thousands of American soldiers died.