Byzantine Longevity

From the founding in AD 330 by Constantine I the Great up to the death in battle of Constantine XI Palaiologos in 1453 on the day Constantinople fell to the Turk.  Well over 12 centuries! 

It wasn't a stable millennium.  Their borders swelled and ebbed.  There were sixteen different dynasties and several periods of internal instability.  Their capital city was sacked and occupied for 50 years by Western crusaders supported by and urged on by Venice during the Fourth Crusade.  The invaders were aided by internal dissension.  But even then Byzantines survived in three successor states east and west of Constantinople and eventually liberated it. 

How did they survive so long?

Edward Luttwak’s book “The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire”  touches on some of the reasons why.  Interesting read if you are fascinated by the duration of empires, dynasties, republics, institutions and such.  Luttwak elaborates on seven major facets pf Byzantine strategy that may answer some of the reasons why they survived so long:

I.                 Avoid war by every possible means in all possible circumstances, but always act as if it might start at any time.

II.               Gather intelligence on the enemy and his mentality, and monitor his movements continuously.

III.            Campaign vigorously, both offensively and defensively, but attack mostly with small units; emphasize patrolling, raiding, and skirmishing rather than all-out attacks.

IV.             Replace the battle of attrition with the “nonbattle” of maneuver.

V.               Strive to end wars successfully by recruiting allies to change the overall balance of power.

VI.            Subversion is the best path to victory.

VII.          When diplomacy and subversion are not enough and there must be fighting, it should be done with “relational” operational methods and tactics that circumvent the most pronounced enemy strengths and exploit weaknesses.

Don't know much about Luttwak and have no idea if he knows what he is talking about.  His companion book on the grand strategy of Rome was criticized by many historians.  And he was seen by some as a neocon, although he was reportedly against the invasion of Iraq and against bombing Iran. 

In any case numbers one, five, and six are critical IMHO, two and four are also key.  Three and seven sound like a good game, but I am not 100% on board.  The emphasis on small unit tactics in the offense outlined in number three sounds much like our current use of SOF.  In number seven Luttwak seems to channel Sun Tzu which is good some of the time - but what would CVC say?

Several other reasons that the Byzantines lasted so long.  Most included in Luttwak's book, some in detail, some briefly.  Others are speculation on my part (or perhaps I remembered them vaguely from FDChief's excellent blogpost on the fall Constantinople two years ago?).

• geography - They sat astride the trade routes, both the East/West routes and the North/South routes.  This made them a commercial powerhouse.  A treasury full with gold buys a lot of friends and allies, buys off a lot of potential adversaries, and pays a lot of soldiers and sailors (and provides for their equipment).

• navy  - They dominated the Black Sea and the Eastern Mediterranean for more than five hundred years, and even the Western Mediterranean early on.  Their fleets managed to hold off the Arab fleets in the Seventh and Eighth centuries.  Eventually they lost naval dominance to Venice and Genoa and later to the Turks resulting in disaster.

• legacy - They had a military legacy from ancient Greece and the earlier western roman empire.  Not strategy, but they took a lot from their forebears on military organization, training, tactics, operational methods, and in the means of evaluation of different strategies

• engineering - This was another inheritance passed down from Rome.  They carried on with the advice of Domitius Corbulo: that the dolabra (a combination pickaxe tool) “was the weapon with which to beat the enemy".  The walls of Constantine and of Theodosius are testimony to that, and the hundreds of cisterns they built for when the aqueducts failed during a siege.

• tax revenues – Tax collection was rigidly organized and sophisticated.   It was a very effective system.  No other contemporary powers could compete.  It filled their treasuries and gave them a huge advantage.

• bureaucracy - They had a capable and enduring bureaucratic class.  It was they who administered the empire, guided diplomacy, counted beans in the treasury, organized and oversaw military logistics and training.  They provided the continuity and institutional memory needed through those sixteen different dynasties and 96 emperors/empresses. Without them - chaos with each change of crown.

•  land for service in the army - This put tens of thousands of veterans on the frontiers of the empire.  Their family's safety gave them incentive to band together into ad hoc militia units.  They retained their weapons.

Decapitation

Hat tip to Svenn at ‘Defense & Freedom’ for linking to a great article over at WOTR.  The article itself is primarily about going back to the proven method of interdiction instead of the theories of Douhet.  However the primary message I get from it regards the impotent strategy of trying to decapitate the enemy. 
 
http://warontherocks.com/2015/09/the-five-ring-circus-how-airpower-enthusiasts-forgot-about-interdiction/
 
Cutting off the head of a snake may be an instinctive reaction, and it works because the head is where the venom and fangs are.   But it does not work against an entire nest of vipers.  And it does not work against a hydra despite the old Greek legend of Hercules and his nephew Iolaus.  Plus, they (Herc and Iolaus)  had advice and inspiration from the goddess Athena.  Decapitation certainly does not work against networks and probably would not work against most organizations.


We should of course target any enemy HQ or CP that are obvious.  But it seems reckless to me to devote resources specifically to hunting down and killing enemy leadership that regenerates itself so cheaply and easily. 

As far as interdiction, sure, the coalition against Daesh should use it tactically.  But for strategic interdiction against them, doesn't that belong more in the realm of diplomacy, intelligence, Interpol, and the criminal courts?

Glad to see it was an Air Force Officer who penned that article.  Perhaps he will be listened to and Air Combat Command will do some rethinking?  Or perhaps not.  This country needs some advice and inspiration.

Fall 1942 - The Turning Point of the War in Europe

November 1942 provides us with one of those events in military history where we can say in retrospect, that it was from this particular point in time that everything started to unravel, in this case, go bust for Nazi Germany in World War II. While I would argue (and I think FD Chief agrees) the actual or "strategic" turning point was probably the June invasion of the USSR and then on December 11, 1941, the declaration of war against the US, Stalingrad provides us with the "operational" turning point. Since we have learned from our own (American since 2001) experience that in war the operational outcome can lag significantly behind the strategic outcome, this only proves the importance of this operational level and how hanging on operationally can influence to some extent the final result, although not to the point of reversing the strategic reality. Rather what seems to be the case is that the losing side loses only more, but at a greater cost to the victor.

My intent here is not to examine the Stalingrad campaign or analyze the operational decisions, but rather to put it within the strategic context of what Germany - or rather Hitler since he was calling all the shots - had to deal with seventy years ago.

On 19 November the Red Army launched an attack against the northern flank of German Army Group B (the German 6th Army, most of 4th Panzer Army and the Romanian 4th Army) that was engaged at Stalingrad and occupying almost all of the city and blocking river traffic along the Volga river. The next day Marshall Zhukov launched the southern wing of his double envelopment from the southern flank. On 23 November (the Germans say the afternoon of 22 November) the two spearheads met at Kalach trapping about 250,000 Axis troops. The Soviets staged a repeat of the meeting for a propaganda film (at 1:20-29).

Reading the German Oberkommando der Wehrmacht war diaries one gets something of the overwhelming character that Hitler's leadership/decisions had put the Germans in strategically. Besides the Eastern Front with its various Army Groups engaged, there were the Eastern Mediterrain, Libya, Tunisia, the Balkans, southern France (the occupation of Vichy), Finland, and the various air and naval operations to contend with.

One gets the impression that the Russian Front was not seen as a single theater, but rather as five separate fronts: Finland, Army Group North facing Leningrad, Army Group Center facing Moscow, Army Group B at Stalingrad, and Army Group A in the Caucasus. Thus each individual front competed individually with those in the West and keeping Italy in the war was Hitler's priority towards the end of 1942. This possible perspective regards only the operational decisions, not those involving logistics, production, genocides, and other matters that Hitler reserved for himself. That the situation with Army Group B was dangerous was recognized relatively early on with the 20 November order to establish Army Group Don from the staff of the 11th Army under the command of Field Marshall von Manstein to take command of Army Group B and other forces coming in. This headquarters was to be tasked with reestablishing the front on the Don/Volga. This distinction is important, it was not first to reestablish contact with Stalingrad, but to re-establish the front as it had existed prior to the Soviet offensive, it was assumed that those forces in Stalingrad would remain in place. A withdrawal from Stalingrad and the Volga was never seriously considered until it was too late. Manstein and his staff were at Vitebsk and due to the weather and rail conditions were unable to arrive in theater until 24 November.

It is also important to remember that the Germans were in the middle of a major troop movement regarding Tunisia. There the 5th Panzer Army was in the midst of being established with significant air assets having been earlier withdrawn from Russia. Movement of the 10th Panzer Division, the Hermann Göring Divison and other formations were underway. In fact on the 20th of November the 22nd Luftlande (Airborne) Division, another capable formation, finished its deployment to the island of Crete which was under no threat at all.

At this point it is important to consider what had led to the summer offensive in the East in the first place. First, the Germans considered the Russians to be on their last legs. The situation of the civilian population in the unoccupied areas of European Russia was known to be catastrophic (based on captured letters to Red Army soldiers). Much of the industrial potential had been seemingly neutralized, and finally the Red Army had suffered tremendous losses up to that point. It seemed from the German perspective unlikely that the Red Army would be able to reconstitute an effective fighting force under the stress of war given what remained. Second, while Moscow was the political center, the Caucasus and the Don/Volga area provided necessary resources. Seizing these resource centers would both considerably weaken the Red Army and strengthen the Wehrmacht at the same time, or so it was assumed.

And then there was the city of Stalingrad itself. On 9 November 1942 in Munich, Hitler had given a speech:

. . . I should say that for my enemies, not for our soldiers. For the speed with which our soldiers have now traversed territory is gigantic. Also what was traversed this year is vast and historically unique. Now I do not always do things just as the others want them done. I consider what the others probably believe, and then do the opposite on principle. So if Mr. Stalin expected that we would attack in the center, I did not want to attack in the center, not only because Mr. Stalin probably believed I would, but because I didn't care about it any more at all. But I wanted to come to the Volga, to a definite place, to a definite city. It accidentally bears the name of Stalin himself, but do not think that I went after it on that account. Indeed, it could have an altogether different name. But only because it is an important point, that is, there 30 million tons of traffic can be cut off, including about 9 million of oil shipments. There all the wheat pours in from those enormous territories of the Ukraine, of the Kuban territory, then to be transported to the North. There the manganese ore was forwarded. A gigantic terminal was there; I wanted to take it. And do you know, we're modest: that is, we have it; there are only a couple of very small places left there. Now the others say: Why aren't you fighting there? Because I don't want to make a second Verdun but would rather do it with very small shock units. Time plays no part here. No ships come up the Volga any more-that is the decisive thing. They have also reproached us, asking why it took us so long at Sevastopol? Because there, too, we did not want to cause an enormous mass murder. Blood is flowing as it is-more than enough. But Sevastopol fell into our hands, and the Crimea fell into our hands. We have reached goal after goal, stubbornly, persistently. And if the enemy, on his part, makes preparations to attack, don't think I want to forestall him there, but at the same moment we let him attack also. Because then defense still is less expensive. Then just let him attack; he'll bleed to death that way, and thus far we have always taken care of the situation anyhow. At any rate, the Russians are not at the Pyrenees or before Seville; that, you see, is the same distance as for us to be in Stalingrad today, or on the Terek, let us say;-but we are there; that can really not be disputed. That is a fact, after all. Naturally, when nothing else will do any more, they also say it's a mistake. Then they suddenly turn around and say: "It is absolutely a mistake for the Germans to have gone to Kirkenes, or to have gone to Narvik, or now perhaps to Stalingrad-what do they expect to do in Stalingrad? For Stalingrad is a capital mistake, a strategic mistake." We will just wait and see whether that was a strategic mistake.

I have a Wehrmacht city map of Stalingrad, dating from June 1942. On it, the city is long, but narrow, hugging the Volga. From the map it looks like it would be so easy to simply punch through to the river. The reality was otherwise, but even as the Red Army encircled the Germans at Stalingrad, they continued operations to capture the last Russian positions in the ruined city, that according to the war diaries . . .

Postscript:

This has been an interesting thread. I would like to thank all who commented, it is the sign of a capable audience when they are able to interact with the initial argument and expand on it considerably, adding many additional pieces to the vast mosaic. I think we are able to consistently achieve that on MilPub as shown by the many posts by various authors and corresponding dialectical commentary on this blog . . . we should keep on keeping on . . .

Four points to close with. First, we are talking about perhaps the most terrible military campaign in history. The geographical and human dimensions are almost beyond our comprehension; the scale of destruction, loss and tragedy are impossible to measure in numbers since the ripples are still touching Eastern Europe in various ways today.

Second, and this a repeat of an earlier argument, that being that we have an adequate description of the totalitarian nature (both specific to the Nazis and general regarding other totalitarian systems) of political movements. My post on Hermann Rauschning's The Revolution of Nihilism introduces the basic ideas. I blended in some of Hannah Arendt's ideas from her classic The Origins of Totalitarianism, but did not begin to do Arendt's thesis justice. It would take much more study, and probably a better mind than mine to achieve that. I consider this very important since following the basic concepts, I would argue that we see a resurgence of totalitarian thinking today in the US. This is particularly evident in our predilection to see violence as the preferred method of dealing with foreign policy issues.

Third, I mentioned a Clausewitzian connection. This is the concept of the Feldherr which influenced not only German, but Soviet, French and JFC Fuller as well. Professor Hew Strachan (who else?) has a great lecture which covers this topic:

So the Feldherr was a military genius who, because he was distinguished by more than his "will, brains, understanding, self-confidence, by something still higher than a longing for fame and honour," became a statesman. For Hesse, the role model was Frederick the Great. The challenge of the 1920s, after the Kaiser's abdication not least because of his failure to fulfil that role, was how to meet its demands in future. The German army had failed to understand Clausewitz before 1914 because it had read him in a narrowly military way, focusing on battle, not on war as a whole. Because Clausewitz saw war as a continuation of policy by other means, he also understood war, according to Adolf Leinveber, writing in 1926, as "an organic whole, from which the individual parts are not separable." Leinveber accepted that politicians had to give unity to war through policy and through the war plans that flowed from that policy. But what therefore followed-not only for Leinveber but also for many others-was that war required "a magnificent dis­tinguished head, a strong character." The Feldherr would unite the conduct of war and policy, so that he became a statesman without at the same time giving up the capacity to conduct war: "he embraces with a glance on the one hand all state issues, while on the other he is sufficiendy confident in his knowledge of what the means which lie in his control can do." p 389

The need for a Feldherr was seen by those representing the entire political spectrum in Germany, from liberals to monarchists. The French used Clausewitz after the war to further develop their concept of the Generalissimo and Fuller's approach to Grand Strategy is much more difficult to achieve without this position. In the USSR, Trotsky, Frunze and Svechin argued for the subordination of specialized and conventional (as opposed to partisan) military command to the political leadership residing in the leader of the Communist Party. Thus we see the position of both Hitler and Stalin - along with the totalitarian elements which in this case are separate but still obviously important - as being influenced by the experience of the First World War and this being common to both democratic and totalitarian governments.

Finally, there is something of the Liddell Hart notion of the "indirect approach" to Fall Blau, the German campaign in the summer of 1942. Hitler wished to bypass the political center of Moscow and instead seize the southern resources/stop movement along the Volga as a way to cripple the USSR. I don't think he actually expected to come to terms with Stalin, but rather to so weaken the Soviet government that they could be held off indefinitely.

It was not a question of time or strategy, but simply a "fact" as Hitler mentions in the linked speech. The Germans were on the Volga and the Terek and they would remain there, and the Feldherr as maker and shaper, "history's actor" had made it so. As I think the readers of this blog are aware, we have seen similar notions of arrogance and self-absorption, of ideologically-tainted wishes replacing strategic thought, of the conceit of violent and limited minds attempting to remake political existence in line with their own whims . . . let's hope this extreme example from the past acts as a caution to temper our own future.

Second Postscript:

Very interesting German soldiers's film from the times . . . Towards the end . . . Stalingrad and Fall Blau . . .

Grand Strategy: The View from 1923 . . .

After every war there is a period of analysis and appraisal which deals with the history and issues brought forward by that war. The greater the war, the greater the tendency for this to expand and include all the issues that the war engendered. Epoch changing wars do this to a great extent, even to establishing a new art of war for the epoch in question. We've seen this to an extent after the Napoleonic wars, the Civil War, and World Wars I and II. There is something of a "weak" reappraisal going on now in regards the two lost wars the US involved itself in subsequent to the attacks of 11 September 2001.

Professor Hew Strachan, the premier historian of the First World War and the Director of the Leverhulme Programme on the Changing Character of War at Oxford, has a recent article out on Grand Strategy. This article will be the subject of a future post, but first I would like to have something historical to compare it with, the work of an earlier writer on military subjects who was perhaps the most influential theorist of his day, that being Colonel J.F.C. Fuller of the Royal Army Tank Corps. Fuller published a book entitled The Reformation of War in 1923 which was one of, or perhaps even the first treatment of what Fuller described as "Grand Strategy".

Strachan mentions Fuller has having developed the term "grand strategy" along with Basil Liddell Hart, but Hart's contribution he lists was written over 20 years after Fuller's, and in 1944, towards the end of the Second World War. Fuller for me thus takes pride of place. Not that he was the only theorist writing about what we could call "grand strategy" at the time. There was also Alexander Svechin of the Red Army and Erich Ludendorff of Germany. More on them later.

Let's start with Fuller's concept of "Grand Strategy":

During peace time this spirit (the spirit or the national will to exist; it is the driving force of all warlike activities) is ever present, and though its nature, during war, does not change, the resistance offered to its progress is greater, and the relationship between this resistance and the will to win gives to any particular war its specific character. During peace or war, our object is to conserve and control this spirit; consequently, we must understand the probable resistance to be met with, for otherwise we shall not be able to gauge the character of war, and not being able to gauge the character we shall not know what type of warfare will prove the most efficient and economical. This control and direction of the will to win and all the means whereby this will may be expressed I will call grand strategy. The Reformation of War, Chapter XI, page 214

To get more of an idea of this spirit that Fuller is talking about lets consider an earlier quote from the book:

Ultimately, from acts of chivalry on the battlefield do we soar to those acts which form the ethics of grand strategy, the fuller meaning of which I will discuss in Chapter XI. To damage a nation morally during days of peace is not good enough; it is but a poor endeavour, which normally must bring but little profit. Ethically, during war, as I will show, grand strategy does aim at demoralizing the enemy, yet also does it consist in the enhancement of a nation's worth in the eyes of its actual or potential enemies. Integrity, honour, justice and courage are the weapons of the grand strategist, which not only demonstrate a nation's moral worth but its martial power. The cultivation of these in peace time forms the backbone of success in war. The Reformation of War, page 72

The essence of grand strategy in Fuller's view is the cultivation of soldierly qualities in the general population, including especially the willingness of the individual to offer themselves in the interests of the state. This requires a high level of what I have described in the past as material and moral cohesion. Notice that Fuller has a dubious view of the use of negative propaganda against an potential enemy, since it is more by enhancing our own prestige and values that we convince the enemy of our own superiority.

So, the strength of "the national will to exist" was not only the basis of a successful grand strategy, but a lesson learned from the First World War. What other lessons had Fuller learned from that conflict?

To answer that question it is important to point out that Fuller's view of that conflict is quite different from the general view today, and different from Hew Strachan's as well. That view is firmly rooted in Fuller's view of humanity:

Though the desire of man is peace, the law of life is war; the fittest, mentally or bodily, survive, and the less fit supply them with food, labour and service. Life lives on life . . . page 8

War exists because humans, men especially, are warlike and see domination as part of life. This would include economic interests, "conquest" not being limited to seizing territory, but economic advantage as well. This of course is a very general condition, hardly specific to the First World War.

More specifically, Britain and Germany went to war due to commercial interests, Britain hoped to destroy her main commercial rival in Europe. With the establishment of the Entente, Britain tied her interests to those of Russia and France, both of which required the defeat of Germany to gain their national goals. Russia's goals especially were extensive including the expulsion of Turkey from Europe and the conquest of Constantinople as well as domination of the Balkans which required the destruction of Austria-Hungary. Fuller provides the most extensive summary of his views in his The Conduct of War 1789 - 1961, pp 143-154, so it is apparent that they did not change over time.

This leads to his very Clausewitzian conclusion that given the nature of the extensive alliances and the wide range of interests, it was impossible to come up with a common policy, for instance, a singular Anglo-French point of view, let alone a unified Entente point of view:

But in August 1914, there was no Anglo-French political point of view, therefore the military point of view was subordinated to a vacuum, which it at once filled to become the sole point of view: in other words, the means monopolized the end." (Ibid, p. 153).

So military strategy had to step in and fill the void left by the absence of a coherent political purpose on the Entente side. This in part due to the inability of the various Allied governments to formulate clearly what is was they were actually fighting for, rather their domestic need to "sell the war" as "defensive", defending civilization against the "Hun" became the basis of the stated political purpose. This necessity to match policy with military means is also brought up by Svechin in regards to German strategy:

The internal weakness of a state is evident more quickly in an offensive than a defensive. The tragedy of the Germans' conduct of the war from 1914 to 1918 lives in the fact that under the conditions Germany could have won this war only as a politically defensive war. Incidentally, the Germans realized this only in August 1918 after all their forces had been exhausted and they were faced with capitulation. German strategy had gone beyond the bounds of the political defensive when they violated Belgian neutrality in August 1914, when they penetrated too deep into Russia 1n 1915 . . . Strategy p 93

For both sides, the military aim displaced the political purpose. Given this view, Fuller comes up with an interesting conclusion:

The importance of grand strategy and all that it includes cannot be over-estimated at the present time, for in the whole course of history the necessity for economy has never been more vital; further, in its true meaning, efficiency cannot exist without it. At any time and irrespective of prosperity, a nation can only afford to spend a certain sum of money as an insurance against war and ultimately, when war occurs, as a safeguard against defeat. For this sum to be economically spent, not only must all obsolecence be weeded out of the defence forces, but no overlapping can be tolerated.

During war, nothing is so uneconomical as improvization ; consequently, our peace strategy must formulate our war strategy, by which I mean that there cannot be two forms of strategy, one for peace and one for war, without wastage — moral, physical and material, when war breaks out. The first duty of the grand strategist is, therefore, to appreciate the commercial and financial position of his country; to discover what its resources and liabilities are. Secondly, he must understand the moral characteristics of his countrymen, their history, peculiarities, social customs and system of government, for all these quantities and qualities form the pillars of the military arch which it is his duty to construct.

Unlike the strategist of the past, the grand strategist of today must no longer be a mere servant of his ever-changing government, but a student of the permanent characteristics and slowly changing institutions of the nation to which he belongs, and which he is called upon to secure against war and defeat. He must, in fact, be a learned historian and a far-seeing philosopher, as well as a skilful strategist and tactician. Today such men are rare to come by, because nations understand practically nothing of the science of war.

Understanding nothing, there is no incentive without or within an army to produce a breed of strategists who may be classed as men of science. In this respect the Germans went further than all other nations, and, during the Great War, it was the firmness of their grand strategy which formed the foundation of their magnificent endurance. The Reformation of War, pp 218-219

Fuller concludes with a proposed massive re-organization of not only British but Imperial governments, all planning coming under the authority of a Generalissimo who serves as the minister of defense, or in any case as a member of the cabinet. This position would be supported by the formation of a General Staff. These staff officers would be trained in a new war college encompassing all three services.

As a recap of his concept of grand strategy, perhaps this quote suffices:

The transmission of power in all its forms, in order to maintain policy, is the aim of grand strategy, its actual employment being the domain of grand tactics. While strategy is more particularly concerned with the movement of armed masses, grand strategy, including these movements, embraces the motive forces which lie behind them both — material and psychological. From the grand strategical point of view, it is just as important to realize the quality of the moral power of a nation, as the quantity of its man-power, or to establish moral communication by instituting a common thought — the will to win throughout the nation and the fighting services. The grand strategist we see is, consequently, also a politician and a diplomatist.

Comparison of Fuller's Concept with that of Svechin and Ludendorff

It is interesting to note that all three treatments of grand strategy were based on assumed strategic incompetence displayed by all sides during the First World War. Ludendorff's was more tempered in his criticism of course since he himself carried the blame for some of the actions Fuller and Svechin criticized.

Of the three, Fuller is the most all encompassing, whereas Svechin comes across as the most "modern" in that he avoids the social darwinism present in the other two, and sees states developing according to historical trends from of course a Marxist perspective.

All three see democracies as sordid affairs with the actual elites operating behind a curtain of propaganda and distortions to hide their actual narrow goals. As Svechin writes, "The ruling class in a state is inclined to regard its own interests as state interests and resorts to the aid of the state apparatus to defend them." Democracies are also most likely to fire up high levels of passionate hatred towards the enemy in order to mobilize the masses to fight.

Conclusions? What can this view from 1923 indicate to us about the concept of grand strategy today?

First, I think it important with any concept, especially strategic theory concepts, to consider their origins which influence not only their inspiration but also development. All three theorists I've mentioned saw the First World War as a strategic disaster run by incompetents, especially in terms of political purpose, which is different from the way we see the First World War today (the generals are the "donkeys" rather than the politicians). In Ludendorff's case this was more the nature of avoiding responsibility for his own actions imo, but that does not explain Fuller's or Svechin's view.

Second, all three saw war as essentially something intrinsically human and unavoidable. Given the right set of historic circumstances, wars simply happen, nobody is to blame generally, although specific acts of political or military incompetence are to be condemned as we have seen. "Stability" in the sense of eternal peace is death, something hardly to be yearned for.

Third, grand strategy required a high level of control and manipulation and had to be specifically organized/designed/fitted to the political community in question. What is needed is a military dictator to implement such a policy, at least during wartime. We see here the totalitarian side of grand strategy as it was originally conceived.

Fourth, the nation state in question required a driving force to succeed, some all-encompassing value set to give meaning to not only the war waged, but especially the sacrifices called for and willingly offered. Simple patriotism, universal ideals, humanist notions, or even Christianity, would not suffice, rather Nationalism as in a historic destiny of the race, or class consciousness (in the case of Svechin) were needed. Ludendorff stressed that his Total War could only be fought defensively against an existential threat. Notice the link between this and the second point above. This opens the door to genocidal wars for existence between nation states, since Enlightenment notions of basic equality among peoples (which Clausewitz for one assumed) have been put into question.

The Big Picture

The Big Picture? I would define it as looking at a problem/situation, whether historical or current, as a "whole", that is within a rich and complex (especially political) context. For some reason Americans, in general, don't seem to be very good at this. The reason why we don't excel at this particular skill could have something to do with the way our political parties developed in the 19th Century, the whole Walter Karp argument of "US Nation" versus "US Republic". A specific example of this inability to deal effectively with our own complex social reality is our dubious assumption that Democrats and Republicans represent the ying and yang, the two sides of the coin, the one and the other, of American politics. They don't. Never have. Rather two shop-worn labels behind which various elite and moneyed interests congregate. When was the last real big political shakeup in the US? Nineteen thirty-two? Karp would say 1892 . . . and what followed that was a manufactured war of imperialist pretenses.

I'm not going to attempt to reproduce Karp's argument here, his prose is much better than mine, but rather simply point out that there does seem to exist an almost "genetic" American tendency to avoid the everyday political reality in favor of emphasizing assumed ideological "virtue", although we would be loath to label it "ideological". In other words we focus on the pretty wrapping but don't worry about what is actually inside the box or where it came from or what it took to get it. The important thing is how it makes us feel . . .

And of course, like any other political community in the world, we like to feel good about ourselves and what we do/have done. One blatant example of this are the names given various policies to make them seem something which they arguably are not, such as "Operation Iraqi Freedom", the "Patriot Act", or anything containing the word "strategy". Whenever one sees a label like this it is a sure indication that the level of bamboozling is high and that our great-grandchildren will probably be cursing us for our stupidity, but then what could be more American than constantly scamming and fleecing the "rubes" or rather playing the rube? It's essentially the national pastime at least among our political and economic elite.

And it's probably always been so, at least in terms of our domestic politics (which of course drive our foreign policies in different ways). The difference today is that contrary to the past we don't seem to have a certain number, a minimum percentage of the public who can yell "wait a minute there!" and bring enough of the masses to their senses so that the scam doesn't get completely out of hand. Or is it rather that minimum number no longer has a podium from which to be heard, all the hoopla concerning the Facebook world to the contrary?

Perhaps we need to promote a different way of looking at the world, recapture the real meaning of "strategy".

So, first let's start with my definition of strategy which has been presented before:

Focused adaptation of divergent sources of power assisted by control over time in pursuit of a political purpose through methodological theoretical construct (strategic theory) with the aim of creating strategic effect/a strategic dynamic greater than the sum of the individual power sources. For the strong political community, strategy can be an option, for the weak it is a necessity.

Then let's consider how these various sources of power or considerations fit together. As I mentioned in the previous thread, I think the great Clausewitzian Aleksandr Svechin puts the "whole perspective" well:

Every question the strategist must resolve is extremely simple, but a correct answer requires a great depth of understanding of the situation of the war as a whole; theory can only emphasize the diversity of possible solutions as a function of different conditions. But a strategist cannot limit himself to correct answers for each question individually. The answer to one strategic question will only be correct when it is in harmony with the answers to other strategic questions. We have put harmony in the preparations of a nation for war at the forefront, but it is no less important in the leadership of a war, only the characteristics of harmony in this case are immeasurably more subtle. This coordination, this achievement of harmony, is the essence of strategy and it forces us to classify practical work on strategy as an art.
Strategy, p 306

Which brings us back to "the big picture", but to get what I'm driving at we need a suitable example . . . and perhaps the best example that comes to mind is the current debate about the Vietnam War. The latest round of this seemingly endless discussion involves the trashing of a familiar historical figure associated with the US defeat in Vietnam, General Westmoreland. Colonel Gian Gentile has responded effectively imo.

I am no expert on this subject. In terms of background, I enlisted in the US Marine Corps Reserve in April 1975, the same month that Saigon fell, and later saw what had become of that branch of the US military post-Vietnam, which for a young and idealistic recruit on active duty for training was hair-raising, but that was the very limited extent of my experience. I have read some books on the subject and have had many discussions with veterans of that war, but nothing like an insightful view through study of the specific history of the conflict. So I profess no specialized knowledge of the subject, but I am a strategic theorist and look at this war - as I look at all wars - from a Clausewitzian strategic theory perspective.

It is interesting that in a book review of Sorley's Westmoreland, in Parameters no less, the word "China" does not appear even once. This in a book explaining how we lost the Vietnam War?

This is particularly relevant when considering that those in high government positions in the Johnson Administration were taking China very seriously. Without China and Chinese ambitions(those assumed to be such in Washington) what was the reason for US intervention in Vietnam? Surely it was not seen as an important US strategic goal that Vietnam stay divided, or that the South Vietnamese government survive as regards to Vietnam itself or even Indochina. What made Vietnam important was the effect the conflict had on China and these supposed Chinese intentions . . . Thomas Schelling, writing in 1966, put the complex situation relatively clearly from this US strategic perspective:

We need to recognize that China, as a "strategic" adversary, could not be taken care of by "strategic war" planning that was developed during two decades of preoccupation with the Soviet Union. China is a different strategic problem altogether. New modes of coercive limited warfare might have to be developed for coping with the problem. The entire tempo of war would be wholly different from anything contemplated against the Soviet Union; except for a small retaliatory force that the Chinese might possess some time in the future, there would be few or no targets of such urgency as to make the initial moments, even the initial days of weeks, as critical as they are bound to be in planning for the contingency of Soviet-American war. The idea of "limited strategic war" between the Soviet Union and the West is often dismissed as plain impracticable, and those who dismiss it may be right; between China and the United States a war would have whatever tempo the US decided on, or a tempo determined by Chinese actions in some local theater, not the hypersonic tempo of preemptive thermonuclear exchanges.
The need to distinguish a campaign intended to eliminate the regime from one intended only to coerce the regime into good behavior could be supremely important when the Chinese possess a nuclear retaliatory capability (against the US or against any other population center that they might choose). Making clear to them that, the most potent coercion might be a target strategy that threatened the regime - eventually, gradually, or uncertainly, not suddenly and decisively - and such a strategy would require discriminating what it is that the regime most treasures and where it is most vulnerable.

Whatever its effect on the North Vietnamese willingness to support the Vietcong, and whatever the capacity of North Vietnam to control the Vietcong in submission to the threat of continued bombing attacks, the bombing of North Vietnam must have had one implication for China that went far beyond that war in Southeast Asia. Forcible resistance to them outside their borders can never cost the Chinese more than the resources they knowingly put at risk, the troops and supplies they send abroad; but the bombing of North Vietnam is a mode of warfare that the record now shows to be a real possibility, one that the US has not only thought of but engaged in. It is a mode of warfare that, at least with air supremacy and the absence of modern anti-aircraft weapons, can be conducted deliberately over a protracted period. And it is a mode of warfare that, if quantitatively increased, could cause extensive physical damage inside the target country, denying any guarantee that the costs of aggression could be confined to the expeditionary force put at risk outside one's border.

Thomas Schelling, Arms and Influence, pp 187-8

The decisive factor in North Vietnam's eventual success was outside support, from both the Soviet Union and from China. With the North enjoying this advantage, at the strategic level, the US could not exercise enough coercion on the North for them to forsake their goal of political unification with the South. Invasion of the North would have triggered Chinese intervention and the US intended to keep this war "limited". Overthrowing the North Vietnamese government was simply not a viable option. And as the war dragged on, even US bombing became unsustainable due to the ever increasing sophistication of anti-aircraft defenses in North Vietnam. It was here from a strategic theory perspective that the war was lost.

Tweeking the tactics on the ground in South Vietnam would have perhaps inflicted higher losses on the North's invasion force, may have bought the Saigon government a bit more time, but to what purpose? Would this US tactical success have changed the character of South Vietnam's ruling elite? Would it have made the people in the South willing to die to save the RVN government? Tactics comes down to the implementation of violence to achieve specific and limited goals which supposedly build on one another to create operational and finally strategic success. Violence has it's uses, and war is essentially organized violence, but it is not going to build a political community. Outstanding tactical virtuosity still would not have translated into a US victory in Vietnam.

At this point the tendency of tactical myopia leading to grand tactical speculation becomes clear and the reason for it as well. It allows us to avoid what the real main questions are and what failure actually entails. It also indicates how limited, and complex, even at times self-defeating, the role of violence is in many wars, especially when used as an instrument by "outside" political players. Which is all very depressing for a society conditioned not to question its ideologically framed motives and endlessly fed the pap that large explosions and massive destruction always lead inevitably to "victory".

For this reason, a lack of sense of the big picture becomes a necessity, actually the possible basis for a career as "snake oil salesman" in the current or even next "war of choice". Much more soothing for the gullible is to instead focus on narrow tactics that we assume that we excel in. All that "warrior" stuff is ever so flashy.

Like cattle we follow the same worn path leading to exactly the same place, but with little consciousness that we have traveled this route before. We share the advantages and disadvantages of any herd animal to our and our decedents' regret.

US Recognizes Libyan Rebels . . .

Ya'll know my view on this . . . Why did we handle it so badly?

Or no surprise at all given the current state of US strategic thought . . . if this is any indication . . .

Harlan Ullman writes:

. . . For most of history, war was a contest between more or less like military forces. Defeating the enemy usually meant defeating his armies as a precondition for victory. Of course, insurgencies were as old as war. And, of course, insurgencies had relatively fixed geographic boundaries that, after the Duke of Wellington's brilliant peninsula campaign during the Napoleonic Wars, became known as guerrilla or small wars.

The American way of war remains firepower intensive. We won World War II, with the Soviet army, literally blowing away the Wehrmacht with our superior firepower.

As technology improved dramatically, so did mobility and maneuver. The Iraqi military was shattered twice by this onslaught first in 1991 and then a dozen years later. And the initial and stunning success in Afghanistan in late 2001 demonstrated the effectiveness of this technology in support of Northern Alliance ground forces in routing the Taliban, at least for the moment.

Unfortunately, Clausewitz's genius has been partially trumped by a critical question: How do even amazingly capable military forces defeat an adversary who lacks an army and uses insurgent, terrorist tactics, metastasized by a radical ideology in which suicide is a preferred weapon while possessing global reach manifested by the September 11th and other attacks against the U.S. and European allies? . . .

With all due respects to the father of "Shock and Awe", I think his history is a ways off. Perhaps some wars between Western armies have been between "more or less like military forces", but the wars between Western and non-Western (and there have been plenty of these) have been by definition "asymmetric".

The British and their little wars, the US in the Philippines and much later in Vietnam, the Russians in Afghanistan . . . but we could go back to Clausewitz's time as well and find the same thing. Napoleon went into Spain and Russia with the best army in the world at that time and was defeated in the end by decidedly second-rate forces. Even the Wehrmacht in WWII easily defeated the Yugoslav army in the spring of 1941 only to be faced later with Partisans who continued on the fight. Ullman's view of WWII is flawed. Sure the Red Army ground the Germans down, but at a terrible cost, perhaps five men for every German soldier they put out of action. Could our successes in Western Europe in 1944-45 have been achieved without this great blood letting, the recourse to "grand attrition" on the part of the Russians?

The invention of gunpowder allowed for distance between combatants, war was no longer necessarily up close and personal. Any additional technological improvements have not quantitatively changed that fact. War and killing have had a remote quality for some time. Is there much difference in this regard between "Big Bertha" in 1918 and the Creech Air Force Base drones of today? We're talking about an improvement of targeting perhaps, but not really a new way of war.

War remains subordinate to politics since it is politics which gives birth to war. The recent failures are all explainable in Clausewitzian terms, which is an uncomfortable fact for people like Mr. Ullman who would rather ignore the current political realities . . . and assume that we have blundered in to some new era of warfare. Sorry, but it has all to do with politics and we ignore that basic human fact at our own peril.

The US recognizes Libyan rebels . . .

Discuss . . .