Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare from 1945 to Ukraine

 "Somewhat ironically, more than a decade later, General Westmoreland would reflect on the battle in the Ia Drang Valley, noting that “An enemy document captured later admitted heavy losses but rationalized them on the basis that the lessons learned were worth the cost of a hundred thousand men.”62 Whether he recognized it or not, that observation captured another reality that would invalidate his strategy: the North Vietnamese leadership did not regard casualties in the same light as did the Americans. The North Vietnamese and their supporters in the South felt they were engaged in their war of independence, and they were willing to sacrifice vast numbers of soldiers to achieve victory in it. It is undoubtedly harder for a general from a democratic country, who constantly needs to consider the domestic political effect of high death tolls, to fight an attritional war. On the other hand, ideological autocrats such as Ho Chi Minh and Mao Zedong had a cynical disregard for human life (from our perspective at least), caring only for the eventual outcome of “the people’s struggle” and the victory of the dictatorship of the proletariat. By contrast, Western generals, understandably, have needed to fight in such a way that casualties are carefully kept to an absolute minimum, both on obvious humanitarian grounds and also so as not to inflame opposition to the war in Congress, in the press and among the public."

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