The Riddle of Steel Published Jan. 16, 2026 By Dr. William Waddell III, AWC Maxwell AFB -- What can John Milius' 1982 film, Conan the Barbarian, tell us--who live in a non-fantastical world about future war? More than you may think.¹ The riddle of steel is a central, if enigmatic, motif in Conan. It provides the unifying theme for the story, and yet even by the end, its answer remains ambiguous. In a genre best known for action and camp, Conan and his riddle are deceptively profound. The final battle of the movie, the so-called Battle of the Mounds, is a masterpiece of cinema. Really, the whole movie is incredible. This is a fact, not open to dispute or discussion. The climatic confrontation is but a great height on a range of lofty peaks. In that fight Conan, the archer Subotai and a decidedly unmartial wizard pit themselves against the entire warrior retinue of Thulsa Doom. Conan and Subotai are well armed. Conan carries a mystical Atlantean sword. Subotai is a skilled archer in addition to being a fast friend. Conan and Subotai also prepare the battlefield. They build killing fields, employ deception and set traps. Great war masters have trained Conan in all manner of tactics and stratagems. But death is a pressing possibility; they are severely outnumbered. Though he relishes the fight, Conan knows that if he falls, he will need to face Crom, his god, and answer the riddle of steel. As they await the riders of Doom the music swells and Conan uncharacteristically prays to his grim god: Crom, I have never prayer to you before. I have no tongue for it. No one, not even you, will remember if we were good men or bad. Why we fought, and why we died. No. All that matters is that two stood against many. That's what's important..." Despite the romantic image of a heroic last stand against overwhelming odds, attrition is a bear. We--the U.S. and her allies--find it off-putting, distasteful. And for good reason. We are viscerally--because it is viscera that we must pour out in abundance--averse to so-called "attritional war." Within the small, professional military elite that make up America's fighting forces, attrition is a bad word, a curse, an admission of failure. The substance of the 90-division gamble in World War II was that we could forego fielding huge forces--at least by WW2 standards--and make good the difference with lavish equipment, air superiority and firepower aplenty.² Even were we to again adopt conscription and fill the ranks with yeoman soldiers, we seem morally committed as a republic to finding a way --any way--to avoid grinding, protracted war. As AirLand Battle was once our answer to the Soviet horde, we are now inspired to think our way beyond attrition because of the clear, inescapable challenge of China. We do not need another accounting of Chinese size and military expansion. Her military is now enormous and increasingly sophisticated. She has ships and missiles in spades. We once hoped that those myriad systems were cheap junk. We're much less sure these days. It is routine in defense circles to hear some version of the comment: "We can't win an attritional war with China." And in most of the scenarios she would be fighting in her own front yard. The losses in such a conflict beggar the uncalloused imagination. This is our own riddle of steel. We have well-worn answers. So does the film. What comes through though is that these are not the answer. Milius' genius is in understanding the mind of the fighter and his false, if soothing predilections. Technology is the first. At the beginning of the movie, with stark peaks and swirling clouds behind, a bearded smith explains to his young son--Conan--his conception of the riddle. At base it is a trust in the weapon, the sword, the quality of steel which Conan's father intimates is a secret of the gods. Conan's father makes swords, after all. "No one in this world can you trust..." he rumbles. "This..." he points to his newly crafted sword. "This you can trust." You can forsake the company or comradeship of men. Place your fidelity in the steel of your sword. In the raid that strikes their village in the next scene, Conan's father fights alone. He dies alone. Thulsa Doom and his minions have come for the fine steel of Conan's clan. The leader of Thulsa Dooms' warband, Rexor, takes the weapon as a trophy. In turn Conan's father is left in the bloody snow, devoured by dogs. We trust in technology. We long for, strive for, and place untoward optimism in the hope of technological superiority. If we can't compete in quantity, we must win in quality. It's not a bad notion, in and of itself, but we quickly raise it to an article of unsupportable faith.³ The sad reality is that technological innovations are transitory advantages quickly copied by an adversary. It's a game we must play, but it rarely offers the winning move. The atomic weapons which finally brought down Imperial Japan are remarkable for their uniqueness, and even they came at the end of an ocean-spanning campaign. The lightning war and precision munitions of 1991 that overturned Saddam Hussein represent the vanishingly small, glamorous exception that proves the otherwise ugly rule. Air superiority as a function of a technical edge swung back and forth through the First World War, and the Sherman tank that battered its way into the Reich in its tens of thousands was in nearly every way inferior to the Tiger which defended the Nazi empire in its hundreds. JADC2 and JADO might be interesting ideas and even worthy endeavors, but in our thinking, they are becoming a panacea, a fanciful remedy for all ills. Artificial Intelligence is only the latest obsession in this regard; it will not be the last. In that final battle in Conan the Barbarian, Rexor wields that sword he took from Conan's father as he confronts the barbarian. If the film had not made the point firmly enough already, in that fight Conan shatters Rexor's stolen sword as he strikes him down. The breaking of the blade repudiates that false answer to the riddle. Conan was right to rely on Subotai's help; Rexor was foolish to think that even such a fine sword alone could save him. Conan's own sword as well as Subotai's bow were certainly not unimportant in the fight. That much is clear. They were not all important, however. The warrior - the military - fixates on weapons not only because they are the tool of his trade but also because they exist solely within his domain. However important, the answer to the riddle is something else. The problem is especially dire for the Air Force, a service defined almost exclusively by its technology, and one which can fall prey to the idea that superior technology is the rudiment of strategy. And so we turn to strategy, to art, to guile, to persuasion or some fecund mixture of them all for our next way around the impasse. If we can't go toe-to-toe, we need to outthink the opponent. But are we so clever? Are we clever enough, consistently enough? Can we bring the enemy to some decisive engagement on advantageous terms and win so rapidly and with such alacrity that he throws in the towel? Or, conversely, are we smart enough to poke, prod, induce, cajole, rearm, dig in, deter with such foresight and finesse that we make the fight for the opponent unwinnable or, even better, unthinkable? One cannot help thinking of Lincoln's complaint, leveled against his many generals who lectured him on proper military "strategy:" "The army, like the nation, has become demoralized by the idea that the war is to be ended, the nation united, and peace restored, by strategy, and not by hard desperate fighting."⁴ Lincoln must have feared that their appeals to subtlety were more likely fig leaves barely covering an irresolute disposition. Strategy--proper strategy--should encompass a recognition of the importance of "hard desperate fighting." Generally, however, we view strategy as its alternative. There must be some elegant, sublime way by which we can escape an unpleasant reality. But sometimes there is no way around. That's not to say that we should abandon thinking as soon as the balloon goes up and return to the dictums of the inter-war Army War College and the notion that "warfare means fighting and that war is never won by maneuvering."⁵ That is a false conclusion and would be to supplant strategic calculus for a questionable tactical doctrine. War is fighting, however. This is true. Clausewitz saw the error of the opposite thinking when he warned against those who believe in "some ingenious way to disarm or defeat an enemy without too much bloodshed..."⁶ Avoiding war is well and good- this is probably Sun Tzu's main point. When war comes, however, it "means fighting." Fighting is not equal to attrition, but they are not entirely distinct either. Conan in the last battle employs his own strategy--really stratagems--but they carry the same aesthetic/thematic force for the purposes of the narrative. He prominently displays the princess he has rescued from Thulsa Doom, binding her to a large standing stone on the highest knoll. Presumably this pricking of Doom's ego - the flaunting of his failure - pushes the cult leader to send his riders into the constricted ground Conan has selected for the fight--a warren of rocks and tombs where Conan can isolate and pick off the henchmen in Doom's superior force. As stated above, Conan and Subotai prepare; they set traps and they goad Thulsa Doom to attack on ground of their choosing. Tellingly, Doom himself does not join his men in the fray and retreats to his mountain after his minions fall. The strategy/stratagems are crucial. They are not enough. Earlier in the film, Conan mounts an unsuccessful, ill-conceived solo attempt to infiltrate Doom's mountain. He is motivated by revenge and almost dies in the attempt. The snake cult captures Conan and subjects him to torture before bringing him into Doom's presence. Face to battered face, Conan reminds Thulsa Doom of the attack on his village that started the film, the murder of his parents and the theft of his father's sword. This act, which Doom can barely remember, became the impetus for a lifelong quest for revenge. Thulsa Doom says that in those years he was motivated by a desire for steel and tells Conan his own answer to the enigma. The sorcerer tells Conan that "steel isn't strong, boy. Flesh is stronger." Doom illustrates his answer by calling to a young beautiful acolyte on a cliff who unhesitatingly hurls herself to her death at his command, at his whim. The point seems to be not just that a sword is nothing without a "hand to wield it," but that the power to command, to manipulate, to control is far greater than the physical - or even symbolic - value of bare steel. Doom doesn't have to fight anymore; others will fight for him. What matters for Doom is not that he can take steel and conquer, but that by his word others will fight and die for him and his putrid chthonic ideology. Doom then orders the barbarian crucified on the "tree of woe." With Subotai's help, Conan escapes the tree, but exposure has left him hovering close to death. While intriguing, the movie gives us compelling reason to reject Doom's answer. At the final scene and in view of hundreds of assembled cultists, Conan confronts his nemesis at the height of the steps leading to his Mountain of Power, the epicenter of Doom's continent-spanning religion. The sorcerer is defenseless; his worshipers frozen in fear and stupefaction. Thulsa Doom, however startled, recovers quickly and attempts to outsmart the simple barbarian. Conan, Doom explains, owes everything to him. His intense desire for revenge has given Conan drive and purpose, the determination to survive his many trials. Conan cannot kill Doom. "What will your world be without me...my son?" softly rumbles Doom's question in James Earl Jones' distinctive baritone. The spell almost works. Conan reels, lost for an instant in existential crisis. He returns to himself with brutal clarity and hacks Doom's head from his shoulders with the shard of his father's broken sword. Conan throws Doom's head down the steps and casts aside the avenging blade. The cultists shriek, Conan fires the despicable temple, and the movie ends. So, what is the answer? If it's not steel itself (technology), or the power of flesh (strategy), what is the answer? We know the stakes are high. In their prior travels through the wilds, Conan and Subotai share a brief philosophical exchange. Conan tells Subotai that when a warrior dies, he must present himself before Crom, the grim god of the Cimmerians, "strong in his mountain," and answer the Riddle of Steel. If Conan cannot answer, "[Crom] will cast [him] out of Valhalla." It stands to reason - at least by the movie's rules- that if we know that a character has reached Valhalla, then that character must have answered correctly. Conan's crucifixion had left him circling death. Valeria, who has come to love the barbarian, pledges to the strange gods of the mounds that if they revivify Conan, she will pay whatever price they ask in return. She furthermore vows to a comatose Conan that even if she were dead, she would return again from beyond the grave to fight by his side. She will pay the gods and defy them if needs be. The price of Conan's restoration turns out to be her own life. Thulsa Doom kills her with a poisoned arrow⁷ as they ride to freedom after having rescued the princess. Conan stokes the flames of her funeral pyre and his hatred for Thulsa Doom. At the moment of greatest tension in the Battle of the Mounds, Conan is down. Rexor, the chief of the Riders of Doom and a formidable warrior in his own right, is poised to finish off the barbarian. His final blow, however, has stopped short. There, wielding her sword and resplendent as a Valkyrie, stands Valeria. She blocks Rexor's attack and blinds him with a preternatural riposte. Conan sees her for the briefest flash, knowing she has gained Valhalla, defied death and fulfilled her vow. Valeria answered the riddle. It was her sheer force of will that gained her Valhalla. It was force of will born out of loyalty, devotion and love, but it was will nonetheless. That same willpower, on display throughout the film, is what finally allows Conan to bum through Thulsa Doom's Machiavellian play for survival and take his head. It is an appeal to will that is most lacking in our discussions regarding war in the future. We are uncomfortable in broaching the idea of will, our own will. We will talk endlessly about the enemy's will. Our will is a much stickier wicket. Historically we have grown uncomfortable with will since it seems to recall the excesses of Nazi Germany, or the fanaticism of Imperial Japan. ⁸ The director, John Milius, doesn't exactly help in this regard. He famously opens Conan the Barbarian with a quote from Nietzsche and in the "special features" talks about the "Teutonic" quality of the film. Hitler indeed had constant and delusional recourse to will as a kind of magical thinking by which he would square his ultimately unmanageable strategic circle. ⁹ We are most unsure of our own civil society's will for the fight, or at least that's the gnawing fear. And the military is rightly uncomfortable in addressing that problem for that other fear of engaging in improper propagandizing of their own people. We saw this on display in France only too recently. In November 2025 the Chief of Defense in France, General Fabien Mandan, came in for heavy criticism from every political angle for his statement that France was "at risk" in future conflict over its inability/unwillingness to "perdre des enfants [lose its children]" in a major war.¹⁰ It is unpalatable, but not untrue. We won't avoid it by not speaking the words. We can't avoid it because it is the issue of will that makes attrition so unnerving. It's not only that one side has more. Attrition is not just a war of numbers, the result of simple, if brutal mathmetactics, as it were. Few wars, if any, come down to a bare question of numbers. Wars come down to decisions. Someone, or some many, decide that they can/should no longer carry on the fight. The fear of attrition is the fear of cold, detached calculus. The enemy says, "we have more; you have less. You should give up, because you can't win." We're afraid that the public, that leadership, or the military itself is not up to that test. It's the belief portion that matters most. The threat of attrition saps the foundation of our will. Technology and strategy are crucial parts of any future fight, but they are shifting sand. The will needs to reside somewhere else, like it did for Valeria. There is an element of irreality in the whole thing, or perhaps a pushing beyond the real to the true.¹¹ To balance out the "Teutonic" feel of Conan with further Gallicism, we can go to Joseph de Maistre who rightly observed: "C'est l'opinion qui perd les batailles, et c'est !'opinion qui les gagne. Qu'est ce qu'une bataille perdue?...C'est une bataille qu'on croit avoir perdue." [It is opinion that loses battles, and it's opinion that wins them. What is a battle lost? It is a battle that you believe you have lost.]¹² The rational is only one facet of war. Switching back to Germans, Clausewitz' wunderliche Dreifaltigkeit [paradoxical trinity]13 identifies the other aspects as well - chance and passion. According to the famous Prussian, war consists of these three interrelated and interpenetrating tendencies (Tendenzen). They are not just tendencies but concerns. The rational considerations (associated most though not exclusively with government) must be addressed- hence strategy. Chance is really the notion of risk, and we want to master it with technology. (Think Admiral Bill Owen's Lifiing the Fog of War and the forlorn hope for perfect situational awareness). The last element is passion, an emotional aspect of war that Clausewitz associates most - again not exclusively- with the people. Passion is a problem in at least two ways. The people can become too passionate, demand too much. They may want a degree of revenge of success out of keeping with rational dictates, or with what chance will allow. But they can also lose their passion. Bereft of hope, they may demand an end to the war. They may cede to the enemy that which cannot be taken back for fear of the costs. Believing they have lost or cannot win, they make it a reality. This is the role of will. Clausewitz addresses that too. "The role of determination is to limit the agonies of doubt."¹³ Will takes over when passion flames out, when the technology crashes, and when the theory-drunk scoundrels who too often pass for strategists find themselves utterly hemmed in. That is the answer to the riddle of steel. Steel doesn't describe the sword; it's a comment on what our character must be. Valor pleases you, Crom! Dr Will Waddell is a Military Historian and Associate Professor in the Air War College Department of Strategy. Endnotes If you have never seen Conan or haven't watched it in years, you will probably find this a bit hard to follow. I recommend stopping reading now and watching the movie instead. In May 1944 Secretary of War Stimson inquired of George Marshall if the US needed to reconsider our self-limitation to 90 divisions. Marshall replied, "We are about to invade the Continent and have staked our success on our air superiority, on Soviet numerical preponderance, and on the high quality of our ground combat units." Quoted in Maurice Matloff, Strategic Planning for Coalition Warfare 1943-1944 (Washington D.C.: Center of Military History, United States Army, 1994), pg. 411. We also look to technology as a kind of wish fulfillment. Martin Van Creveld noted that "[t]he shorter the war, the greater the importance of weapons and weapon systems. The longer it is, the greater the role of military activities other than fighting pure and simple..." We desire a quick war and so we invest ourselves in technology in the hopes that we can make it so. As Van Creveld also notes, war does not operate on the linear logic that obtains in technology, but on a "paradoxical" logic, the kind we see explained in Clausewitz and the contest of wills. War is suffused with uncertainty and defies the efficiency (and speed) of a technological contest, because of the interaction (Wechselwirkung) of the opposing sides. See Martin Van Creveld, Technology and War: From 2000 B.C. to the Present (New York: The Free Press, 1991), pg. 312. Quoted in Herman Hattaway and Archer Jones, How the North Won: A Military History of the Civil War (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1983), pg. 289. To be fair to the generals, Lincoln later admitted that "the difficulty is in our case rather than in any particular generals." (pg. 333) Quoted in John A. Adams, The Battle for Western Europe, Fall 1944: An Operational Assessment (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2010), pg. 64. Carl von Clausewitz, On War, trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989), 75. It's actually some kind of asp that Thulsa Doom's magic renders rigid to be fired from a bow as an arrow. We seem to pass by, or redefine, Churchill's defiance in 1940, which was its own kind of fanaticism. The difference is in the ends, not the attitude. See Stephen Fritz, The First Soldier: Hitler as Military Leader (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018), pg. 341. A good example of this occurring amidst the debacle of Battle of the Bulge. Le chef d'etat-major des Armees Fabien Mandon est «pleinement legitime a s'exprimer sur les menaces», defend Catherine Vautrin. Relying on this Kantian distinction. Quoted in Isaiah Berlin, The Hedgehog and the Fox (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013), pg. 59. To be fair, de Maistre was a Savoyard, so not French entirely, but at least not German. Carl von Clausewitz, On War, trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989), pg. 102-103.