Hope is a funny thing, isn’t it? In the military, we often quip that “Hope isn’t a method” meaning that hope isn’t a substitute for good planning. But the opposite is sometimes true as well, right? Sometimes hope is all an individual or commander has to hold on to. The only thing troops have to keep from giving in. The last lifeline within reach before going under for that final time.
It’s easy to find historical examples of hope paying off. Hope that Great Britain could fend off Hitler’s aerial assault—and by extension prevent an invasion of the Home Islands—put grossly outnumbered and outgunned British pilots back into their planes day after day to challenge the Germans in 1941. Hope of liberation by the Allies kept French partisans fighting impossible odds against a seemingly all-powerful Nazi regime between 1940 and 1944. Hope of rescue kept tens of thousands of prisoners of war from ending their own lives in spite of squalid conditions, starvation rations, and mistreatment by their Japanese captors. Hope of a miracle, frankly, led hundreds of thousands of British troops to line up on beaches at Dunkirk to be rescued by a fleet of yachts and pleasure boats, preserving the army and allowing it to fight another day.
You can also identify examples from World War II where leaders relied too much upon hope and instead made fatal decisions. Fatal for them and their troops. The Japanese hoped that inflicting enough casualties upon the U.S. at Iwo Jima and Okinawa would allow them to dictate terms to end the war, but instead resulted in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Hitler’s hope that the Luftwaffe could supply Von Paulus’ encircled 6th Army at Stalingrad led him to forbid a breakout attempt when the force was available to make it successful, leading to 91,000 veteran troops being marched off into Soviet captivity. Only 5,000 ever made it back home to Germany. Hope that inflicting a serious enough military defeat upon the U.S. would force Roosevelt to immediately sue for peace led Japan to plan, resource, and execute the attack on Pearl Harbor, thereby sowing the seeds of the Empire’s own destruction.
The British could have bowed to Hitler’s calls for peace, getting out of the war while England was still relatively unscathed. The French could have lain low, accepted the terrible toll the Germans were daily exacting from them physically, psychologically, and emotionally, and just waited for liberation. The British Expeditionary Force could have either fought the Germans to the last man or surrendered in order to preserve the force. Instead hope inspired both decisions and actions and these not only survived, they succeeded beyond their wildest expectations.
It’s just as easy, however, to see how hope, untempered by at least a modicum of pragmatism, can lead to tragic consequences. Somehow there seems to be a “right” amount of hope—or reliance upon hope—that is helpful and leads men to great accomplishments. Yet on the flip side of the coin, too much hope, over-reliance upon it in the face of serious and impending practical concerns, can lead to disaster.
And yet this isn’t a problem just for the military leaders of our world past and present. This same dynamic plays out daily in our lives, doesn’t it? How much stock, how much faith, how much of ourselves do we put into our hopes for the future? How many of the practical concerns do we rationalize away, convince ourselves we’ve mitigated against, or simply ignore in order to maintain focus on what we hope will transpire, no matter how far-fetched?
Others can, it appears, more easily see when we’ve gone too far in the direction of hope or given too little credence to the pragmatic. Often we can admit the same—in hindsight. But there, in the moment, making the decision, the shining glimmer of hope is often what wins out over all the more practical fears. This seems to me, perhaps, at the same time one of humanity’s greatest qualities and most serious weaknesses.
Perhaps it takes a special person, a rare individual, to consistently identify and maintain that balance over the long-haul. Someone who can ignore the promise of hope when pragmatic concerns weigh more heavily, yet lean upon it when appropriate or necessary. The MacArthurs of the world who can make the tough decision to abandon the Philippines yet less than a decade later boldly land at Incheon.
Since military leadership is founded to a certain extent upon the soldier’s faith in his commander’s abilities—displayed most prominently in applications of good judgment—troops are more willing to accept their commander’s reliance upon hope if he’s shown himself pragmatic in the past. But as individuals, we don’t have this type of weather vane to guage when we should accept hope as a method. We’ve got to figure out for ourselves when to take council of pressing concerns and when to hold out for something . . . special.
Hope really is an interesting phenomenon and, like a double-edged sword, seems to be capable of cutting both ways. How does an individual avoid the one while making the most of the other? That’s what distinguishes the great swordsman from the competent. What separates legendary historical figures from the merely great ones. What draws our attention to the most accomplished amongst us, standing head and shoulders above those who’ve admittedly achieved incredible things in their own right.
Perhaps we should strive to find the balance, that precarious psychological point where we can objectively consider both the possibilities and the risks and weigh them equally. Then, and only then, can we consistently make decisions that allow for our hopes to be fulfilled, but don’t get us ambushed by the cold, hard facts of life.
History provides many examples of those who’ve both succeeded and failed at this most difficult of tasks. We can only study, learn, and try to make better decisions in the future . . . and hope for the best of outcomes.
M. G. Haynes