The progression of war is filled with surprises, misjudgments, and complex interactions. This deep uncertainty makes it difficult for traditional predictive models to capture the true dynamics of warfare, often rendering predictions highly unreliable and posing a critical challenge to studying the sustainability of war. This study seeks to develop an analytical framework to effectively characterize war endurance—defined here as the ability to deplete the enemy’s forces and to sustain the war. We characterize the sustainability of warfare by whether a set of measurable performance requirements is met and explore the factors that may determine whether a party can meet these requirements.
This study applies the robustness analysis paradigm to the domain of war endurance. The core objective is not to find optimal solutions for specific contexts, but to demonstrate a methodology to manage the deep uncertainties that threaten war sustainability and to explore the robustness of strategic decisions. To this end, we utilize Info-gap Decision Theory (IGDT), to explore basic generic models and motivate general theoretical assertions.
