"On Will and War" Topic

""Will" may be the most underexamined term of art in security studies. A traditional construct holds that both "opportunity" and "willingness" are necessary for action in international engagements. While this seems maddeningly obvious, most defense analysts focus on the opportunity — capacity and capabilities — when the willingness is far more crucial. Even when assessed, it is often reduced to the "will to fight" — such a bland military vernacular as to be almost meaningless. While "will" is included by Carl von Clausewitz in the very definition of war — "an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will" — and as a key component in the enemy's power of resistance — "the total means at his disposal and the strength of the will" — the term remains undefined. It is implicit that "will" involves physical and moral ability to both act and resist, but that is as far as Clausewitz takes us. Indeed, even Raymond Aron concedes: "the will to resist cannot be measured."

That didn't stop military strategists from asserting the importance of "will." The maneuver warfare movement of the 1990s was centered on disruption of the enemy's will to fight. David A Grossman wrote an entire essay on "Defeating the Enemy's Will: The Psychological Foundations of Maneuver Warfare," in which he argued that "the essence of maneuver warfare [is] that you defeat the enemy's will to fight rather than his ability to fight," without ever explicitly defining will…"
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Amicalement
Armand

And the US lost the Vietnam War in the will of the American people to fight.

(smile)

Amicalement
Armand