| |
Military strategy is a set of
ideas implemented by military organizations to pursue desired strategic goals.
Derived from the Greek word strategos, the term strategy, when it appeared in
use during the 18th century, was seen in its narrow sense as the "art of
the general", or "'the art of arrangement" of troops.Military
strategy deals with the planning and conduct of campaigns, the movement and
disposition of forces, and the deception of the enemy. The father of Western
modern strategic studies, Carl von Clausewitz (1780–1831), defined
military strategy as "the employment of battles to gain the end of
war." B. H. Liddell Hart's definition put less emphasis on battles,
defining strategy as "the art of distributing and applying military means
to fulfill the ends of policy". Hence, both gave the pre-eminence to
political aims over military goals.
Sun Tzu (544-496 BC) is often considered as the father of Eastern military
strategy and greatly influenced Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese
historical and modern war tactics. The Art of War by Sun Tzu grew in
popularity and saw practical use in Western society as well. It continues to
influence many competitive endeavors in Asia, Europe, and America including
culture, politics, and business, as well as modern warfare. The Eastern
military strategy differs from the Western by focusing more on asymmetric
warfare and deception. Chanakya's Arthashastra has been important strategic and
political compendium in Indian and asian history as well.
Strategy differs from tactics, in that strategy refers to the employment of all
of a nation's military capabilities through high level and long term planning,
development and procurement to guarantee security or victory. Tactics is the
military science employed to secure objectives defined as part of the military
strategy; especially the methods whereby men, equipment, aircraft, ships and
weapons are employed and directed against an enemy.
Fundamentals:
Military strategy is the planning and execution of the contest between groups
of armed adversaries. Strategy, which is a subdiscipline of warfare and of
foreign policy, is a principal tool to secure national interests. It is larger
in perspective than military tactics, which involves the disposition and
maneuver of units on a particular sea or battlefield, but less broad than grand
strategy otherwise called national strategy, which is the overarching strategy
of the largest of organizations such as the nation state, confederation, or
international alliance and involves using diplomatic, informational, military
and economic resources. Military strategy involves using military resources
such as people, equipment, and information against the opponent's resources to
gain supremacy or reduce the opponent's will to fight, developed through the
precepts of military science. NATO's definition of strategy is "presenting
the manner in which military power should be developed and applied to achieve
national objectives or those of a group of nations.
Strategy may be divided into 'Grand Strategy', geopolitical in scope and
'military strategy' that converts the geopolitical policy objectives into
militarily achievable goals and campaigns. Field Marshal Viscount Alanbrooke,
Chief of the Imperial General Staff and co-chairman of the Anglo-US Combined
Chiefs of Staff Committee for most of the Second World War, described the art
of military strategy as: "to derive from the [policy] aim a series of
military objectives to be achieved: to assess these objectives as to the
military requirements they create, and the pre-conditions which the achievement
of each is likely to necessitate: to measure available and potential resources
against the requirements and to chart from this process a coherent pattern of
priorities and a rational course of action." Field-Marshal Montgomery
summed it up thus "Strategy is the art of distributing and applying
military means, such as armed forces and supplies, to fulfil the ends of
policy. Tactics means the dispositions for, and control of, military forces and
techniques in actual fighting. Put more shortly: strategy is the art of the
conduct of war, tactics the art of fighting."
Background:
Military strategy in the 19th century was still viewed as one of a trivium of
"arts" or "sciences" that govern the conduct of warfare;
the others being tactics, the execution of plans and maneuvering of forces in
battle, and logistics, the maintenance of an army. The view had prevailed since
the Roman times, and the borderline between strategy and tactics at this time
was blurred, and sometimes categorization of a decision is a matter of almost
personal opinion. Carnot, during the French Revolutionary Wars thought it
simply involved concentration of troops. Strategy and tactics are closely
related and exist on the same continuum; modern thinking places the operational
level between them. All deal with distance, time and force but strategy is
large scale, can endure through years, and is societal while tactics are small
scale and involve the disposition of fewer elements enduring hours to weeks.
Originally strategy was understood to govern the prelude to a battle while
tactics controlled its execution. However, in the world wars of the 20th
century, the distinction between maneuver and battle, strategy and tactics,
expanded with the capacity of technology and transit. Tactics that were once
the province of a company of cavalry would be applied to a panzer army. It is
often said that the art of strategies defines the goals to achieve in a
military campaign, while tactics defines the methods to achieve these goals.
Strategic goals could be "We want to conquer area X", or "We
want to stop country Y's expansion in world trade in commodity Z"; while
tactical decisions range from a general statement—e.g., "We're going
to do this by a naval invasion of the North of country X", "We're
going to blockade the ports of country Y", to a more specific "C
Platoon will attack while D platoon provides fire cover". In its purest
form, strategy dealt solely with military issues. In earlier societies, a king
or political leader was often the same person as the military leader. If not,
the distance of communication between the political and the military leader was
small. But as the need of a professional army grew, the bounds between the
politicians and the military came to be recognized. In many cases, it was
decided that there was a need for a separation. As French statesman Georges
Clemenceau said, "War is too important a business to be left to
soldiers." This gave rise to the concept of the grand strategy which
encompasses the management of the resources of an entire nation in the conduct
of warfare. In the environment of the grand strategy, the military component is
largely reduced to operational strategy—the planning and control of large
military units such as corps and divisions. As the size and number of the
armies grew and the technology to communicate and control improved, the
difference between "military strategy" and "grand strategy"
shrank. Fundamental to grand strategy is the diplomacy through which a nation
might forge alliances or pressure another nation into compliance, thereby
achieving victory without resorting to combat. Another element of grand
strategy is the management of the post-war peace. As Clausewitz stated, a
successful military strategy may be a means to an end, but it is not an end in
itself. There are numerous examples in history where victory on the battlefield
has not translated into goals such as long term peace, security or
tranquillity.
Principles:
Military stratagem in the Maneuver against the Romans by Cimbri and Teutons
circa 100 B.C. Many military strategists have attempted to encapsulate a
successful strategy in a set of principles. Sun Tzu defined 13 principles in
his The Art of War while Napoleon listed 115 maxims. American Civil War General
Nathan Bedford Forrest had only one: to "[get] there first with the most
men". The concepts given as essential in the United States Army Field
Manual of Military Operations (FM 3–0) are:
Objective (Direct every military operation towards a clearly defined, decisive,
and attainable objective)
Offensive (Seize, retain, and exploit the initiative)
Mass (Concentrate combat power at the decisive place and time)
Economy of Force (Allocate minimum essential combat power to secondary efforts)
Maneuver (Place the enemy in a disadvantageous position through the flexible
application of combat power)
Unity of Command (For every objective, ensure unity of effort under one
responsible commander)
Security (Never permit the enemy to acquire an unexpected advantage)
Surprise (Strike the enemy at a time, at a place, or in a manner for which he
is unprepared)
Simplicity (Prepare clear, uncomplicated plans and clear, concise orders to
ensure thorough understanding)
According to Greene and Armstrong, some planners assert adhering to the
fundamental principles guarantees victory, while others claim war is
unpredictable and the strategist must be flexible. Others argue predictability
could be increased if the protagonists were to view the situation from the
other sides in a conflict. Field Marshal Count Helmuth von Moltke expressed
strategy as a system of "ad hoc expedients" by which a general must
take action while under pressure. These underlying principles of strategy have
survived relatively unscathed as the technology of warfare has developed.
Strategy (and tactics) must constantly evolve in response to technological
advances. A successful strategy from one era tends to remain in favor long
after new developments in military weaponry and matériel have rendered
it obsolete. World War I, and to a great extent the American Civil War, saw
Napoleonic tactics of "offense at all costs" pitted against the
defensive power of the trench, machine gun and barbed wire. As a reaction to
her World War I experience, France entered World War II with a purely defensive
doctrine, epitomized by the "impregnable" Maginot Line, but only to
be completely circumvented by the German blitzkrieg in the Fall of France.
Development:
Antiquity:
The principles of military strategy emerged at least as far back as 500 BC in
the works of Sun Tzu and Chanakya. The campaigns of Alexander the Great,
Chandragupta Maurya, Hannibal, Qin Shi Huang, Julius Cæsar, Zhuge Liang,
Khalid ibn al-Walid and, in particular, Cyrus the Great demonstrate strategic
planning and movement. Mahan describes in the preface to The Influence of Sea
Power upon History how the Romans used their sea power to effectively block the
sea lines of communication of Hannibal with Carthage; and so via a maritime
strategy achieved Hannibal's removal from Italy, despite never beating him
there with their legions. One of these strategies was shown in the battle
between Greek city states and Persia. The Battle of Thermopylae in which the
Greek forces were outnumbered stood as a good military strategy. The Greek
allied forces ultimately lost the battle, but the training, use of armor, and
location allowed them to defeat many Persian troops before losing. In the end,
the Greek alliance lost the battle but not the war as a result of that strategy
which continued on to the battle of Plataea. The Battle of Plataea in 479 BC
resulted in a victory for the Greeks against Persia, which exemplified that
military strategy was extremely beneficial to defeating a numerous enemy. Early
strategies included the strategy of annihilation, exhaustion, attrition
warfare, scorched earth action, blockade, guerrilla campaign, deception and
feint. Ingenuity and adeptness were limited only by imagination, accord, and
technology. Strategists continually exploited ever-advancing technology. The
word "strategy" itself derives from the Greek " (strategia),
"office of general, command, generalship", in turn from (strategos),
"leader or commander of an army, general", a compound of (stratos),
"army, host" " (agos), "leader, chief", in turn from
(ago), "to lead".
No evidence exists of it being used in a modern sense in Ancient Greek, but we
find it in Byzantine documents from the 6th century onwards, and most notably
in the work attributed to Emperor Leo VI the Wise of Byzantium.
Middle Ages:
Genghis Khan and the Mongols Mongol Empire in 1227 at Genghis Khan's death As a
counterpoint to European developments in the strategic art, the Mongol Emperor
Genghis Khan provides a useful example. Genghis' successes, and those of his
successors, were based on manoeuvre and terror. The main focus of Genghis'
strategic assault was the psychology of the opposing population. By steady and
meticulous implementation of this strategy, Genghis and his descendants were
able to conquer most of Eurasia. The building blocks of Genghis' army and his
strategy were his tribal levies of mounted archers, scorched earth-style
methods, and, equally essential, the vast horse-herds of Mongolia. Each archer
had at least one extra horse—there was an average five horses per
man—thus the entire army could move with astounding rapidity. Moreover,
since horse milk and horse blood were the staples of the Mongolian diet,
Genghis' horse-herds functioned not just as his means of movement but as his
logistical sustainment. All other necessities would be foraged and plundered.
Khan's marauders also brought with them mobile shelters, concubines, butchers,
and cooks. Through maneuver and continuous assault, Chinese, Persian, Arab and
Eastern European armies could be stressed until they collapsed, and were then
annihilated in pursuit and encirclement. Compared to the armies of Genghis,
nearly all other armies were cumbersome and relatively static. It was not until
well into the 20th century that any army was able to match the speed of
deployment of Genghis' armies. When confronted with a fortified city, the
Mongol imperatives of maneuver and speed required that it be quickly subdued.
Here the terror engendered by the bloody reputation of the Mongolians helped to
intimidate and subdue. So too did primitive biological warfare. A trebuchet or
other type of ballista weapon would be used to launch dead animals and corpses
into a besieged city, spreading disease and death, such as the Black Plague. If
a particular town or city displeased the Mongolian Khan, everyone in the city
would be killed to set an example for all other cities. This was early
psychological warfare. To refer to the nine strategic principles outlined
above, the Mongol strategy was directed toward an objective (that schwerpunkt
(main focus) being the morale and mental state of the opposing population)
achieved through the offensive; this offensive was itself characterized by
concentration of force, maneuver, surprise, and simplicity.
Early Modern era:
In 1520 Niccolò Machiavelli's Dell'arte della guerra (Art of War) dealt
with the relationship between civil and military matters and the formation of
grand strategy. In the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), Gustavus Adolphus of
Sweden demonstrated advanced operational strategy that led to his victories on
the soil of the Holy Roman Empire. It was not until the 18th century that
military strategy was subjected to serious study in Europe. The word was first
used in German as "Strategie" in a translation of Leo's work in 1777,
shortly thereafter in French as "stratégie" by Leo's French
translator, and was first attested in English 1810. In the Seven Years' War
(1756–1763), Frederick the Great improvised a "strategy of
exhaustion" (see attrition warfare) to hold off his opponents and conserve
his Prussian forces. Assailed from all sides by France, Austria, Russia and
Sweden, Frederick exploited his central position, which enabled him to move his
army along interior lines and concentrate against one opponent at a time.
Unable to achieve victory, he was able to stave off defeat until a diplomatic
solution emerged. Frederick's "victory" led to great significance
being placed on "geometric strategy" which emphasized lines of
manoeuvre, awareness of terrain and possession of critical strong-points.
Napoleonic:
The French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars that followed
revolutionized military strategy. The impact of this period was still to be
felt in the American Civil War and the early phases of World War I. With the
advent of cheap small arms and the rise of the drafted citizen soldier, armies
grew rapidly in size to become massed formations. This necessitated dividing
the army first into divisions and later into corps. Along with divisions came
divisional artillery; light-weight, mobile cannon with great range and
firepower. The rigid formations of pikemen and musketeers firing massed volleys
gave way to light infantry fighting in skirmish lines. Napoleon I of France
took advantage of these developments to pursue an effective "battle of
annihilation". Napoleon invariably sought to achieve decision in battle,
with the sole aim of utterly destroying his opponent, usually achieving success
through superior maneuver. As ruler and general he dealt with the grand
strategy as well as the operational strategy, making use of political and
economic measures.
After defeating Prussian forces at Jena, the French Army entered Berlin on 27
October 1806. While not the originator of the methods he used, Napoleon
effectively combined the relatively superior maneuver and battle stages into
one event. Before this, General Officers had considered this approach to battle
as separate events. However, Napoleon used the maneuver to battle to dictate
how and where the battle would progress. The Battle of Austerlitz was a perfect
example of this maneuver. Napoleon withdrew from a strong position to draw his
opponent forward and tempt him into a flank attack, weakening his center. This
allowed the French army to split the allied army and gain victory.
Napoleon used two primary strategies for the approach to battle. His
"Manoeuvre De Derrière" (move onto the rear) was intended to
place the French Army across the enemy's lines of communications. This forced
the opponent to either march to battle with Napoleon or attempt to find an
escape route around the army. By placing his army into the rear, his opponent's
supplies and communications would be cut. This had a negative effect on enemy
morale. Once joined, the battle would be one in which his opponent could not
afford defeat. This also allowed Napoleon to select multiple battle angles into
a battle site. Initially, the lack of force concentration helped with foraging
for food and sought to confuse the enemy as to his real location and
intentions. The "indirect" approach into battle also allowed Napoleon
to disrupt the linear formations used by the allied armies. As the battle
progressed, the enemy committed their reserves to stabilize the situation,
Napoleon would suddenly release the flanking formation to attack the enemy. His
opponents, being suddenly confronted with a new threat and with little
reserves, had no choice but to weaken the area closest to the flanking
formation and draw up a battle line at a right angle in an attempt to stop this
new threat. Once this had occurred, Napoleon would mass his reserves at the
hinge of that right angle and launch a heavy attack to break the lines. The
rupture in the enemy lines allowed Napoleon's cavalry to flank both lines and
roll them up leaving his opponent no choice but to surrender or flee. The
second strategy used by Napoleon I of France when confronted with two or more
enemy armies was the use of the central position. This allowed Napoleon to
drive a wedge to separate the enemy armies. He would then use part of his force
to mask one army while the larger portion overwhelmed and defeated the second
army quickly. He would then march on the second army leaving a portion to
pursue the first army and repeat the operations (defeat in detail). This was
designed to achieve the highest concentration of men into the primary battle
while limiting the enemy's ability to reinforce the critical battle. The
central position did have a weakness in that the full power of the pursuit of
the enemy could not be achieved because the second army needed attention.
Napoleon used the central position strategy during the Battle of Waterloo.
Waterloo:
Map of the Waterloo campaign 19th century musketeers from Wellington at
Waterloo by Robert Alexander Hillingford, 18 June 1815
See also: Waterloo Campaign:
Napoleon masked Wellington and massed against the Prussian army, and then after
the Battle of Ligny was won, Napoleon attempted to do the same to the
Allied/British army located just to the south of Waterloo. His subordinate was
unable to mask the defeated Prussian army, who reinforced the Waterloo battle
in time to defeat Napoleon and end his domination of Europe. It can be said
that the Prussian Army under Blücher used the "maneuver de
derrière" against Napoleon who was suddenly placed in a position of
reacting to a new enemy threat. Napoleon's practical strategic triumphs,
repeatedly leading smaller forces to defeat larger ones, inspired a whole new
field of study into military strategy. In particular, his opponents were keen
to develop a body of knowledge in this area to allow them to counteract a
masterful individual with a highly competent group of officers, a General
Staff. The two most significant students of his work were Carl von Clausewitz,
a Prussian with a background in philosophy, and Antoine-Henri Jomini, who had
been one of Napoleon's staff officers. One notable exception to Napoleon's
strategy of annihilation and a precursor to trench warfare were the Lines of
Torres Vedras during the Peninsular War. French Armies lived off the land and
when they were confronted by a line of fortifications which they could not out
flank, they were unable to continue the advance and were forced to retreat once
they had consumed all the provisions of the region in front of the lines. The
Peninsular campaign was notable for the development of another method of
warfare which went largely unnoticed at the time, but would become far more
common in the 20th century. That was the aid and encouragement the British gave
to the Spanish to harass the French behind their lines which led them to
squander most of the assets of their Iberian army in protecting the army's line
of communications. This was a very cost effective move for the British, because
it cost far less to aid Spanish insurgents than it did to equip and pay regular
British army units to engage the same number of French troops. As the British
army could be correspondingly smaller it was able to supply its troops by sea
and land without having to live off the land as was the norm at the time.
Further, because they did not have to forage they did not antagonise the locals
and so did not have to garrison their lines of communications to the same
extent as the French did. So the strategy of aiding their Spanish civilian
allies in their guerrilla or 'small war' benefited the British in many ways,
not all of which were immediately obvious.
Clausewitz and Jomini:
Clausewitz's On War has become the respected reference for strategy,
dealing with political, as well as military, leadership. His most famous
assertion being: "War is not merely a political act, but also a real
political instrument, a continuation of policy carried out by other
means." For Clausewitz, war was first and foremost a political act, and
thus the purpose of all strategy was to achieve the political goal that the
state was seeking to accomplish. As such, Clausewitz famously argued that war
was the "continuation of politics by other means", and as such,
argued that the amount of force used by the state would and should be
proportional to whatever the political aim that the state was seeking to
achieve via war. Clausewitz further dismissed "geometry" as an
insignificant factor in strategy, believing instead that ideally all wars
should follow the Napoleonic concept of victory through a decisive battle of
annihilation and destruction of the opposing force, at any cost. However, he
also recognized that his ideal of how war should be fought was not always
practical in reality and that limited warfare could influence policy by wearing
down the opposition through a "strategy of attrition".
In contrast to Clausewitz, Antoine-Henri Jomini dealt mainly with operational
strategy, planning and intelligence, the conduct of the campaign, and
"generalship" rather than "statesmanship". He proposed that
victory could be achieved by occupying the enemy's territory rather than
destroying his army. As such, geometric considerations were prominent in his
theory of strategy. Jomini's two basic principles of strategy were to
concentrate against fractions of the enemy force at a time and to strike at the
most decisive objective. Clausewitz and Jomini are required reading for today's
military professional officer.
Industrial age:
The evolution of military strategy continued in the American Civil War
(1861–65). The practice of strategy was advanced by generals such as
Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman, all of whom had
been influenced by the feats of Napoleon (Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson
was said to have carried a book of Napoleon's maxims with him.) However, the
adherence to the Napoleonic principles in the face of technological advances
such as the long-range infantry breechloader rifles and minie ball guns
generally led to disastrous consequences for both the Union and Confederate
forces and populace. The time and space in which war was waged changed as well.
Railroads enabled swift movement of large forces but the manoeuvring was
constrained to narrow, vulnerable corridors. Steam power and ironclads changed
transport and combat at sea. Newly invented telegraph enabled more rapid
communication between armies and their headquarters capitals. Combat was still
usually waged by opposing divisions with skirmish lines on rural battlefields,
violent naval engagements by cannon-armed sailing or steam-powered vessels, and
assault on military forces defending a town. There was still room for triumphs
for the strategy of manoeuvre such as Sherman's March to the Sea in 1864, but
these depended upon an enemy's unwillingness to entrench. Towards the end of
the war, especially in defense of static targets as in the battles of Cold
Harbor and Vicksburg, trench networks foreshadowed World War I. Many of the
lessons of the American Civil War were forgotten, when in wars like the
Austro-Prussian War or the Franco-Prussian War, manoeuvre won the day. In the
period preceding World War I, two of the most influential strategists were the
Prussian generals, Helmuth von Moltke and Alfred von Schlieffen. Under Moltke
the Prussian army achieved victory in the Austro-Prussian War (1866) and the
Franco-Prussian War (1870–71), the latter campaign being widely regarded
as a classic example of the conception and execution of military strategy. In
addition to exploiting railroads and highways for manoeuvre, Moltke also
exploited the telegraph for control of large armies. He recognised the need to
delegate control to subordinate commanders and to issue directives rather than
specific orders. Moltke is most remembered as a strategist for his belief in
the need for flexibility and that no plan, however well prepared, can be
guaranteed to survive beyond the first encounter with the enemy. Field Marshal
Schlieffen succeeded Moltke and directed German planning in the lead up to
World War I. He advocated the "strategy of annihilation" but was
faced by a war on two fronts against numerically superior opposition. The
strategy he formulated was the Schlieffen Plan, defending in the east while
concentrating for a decisive victory in the west, after which the Germans would
go on to the offensive in the east. Influenced by Hannibal's success at the
Battle of Cannae, Schlieffen planned for a single great battle of encirclement,
thereby annihilating his enemy. Another German strategist of the period was
Hans Delbrück who expanded on Clausewitz's concept of "limited
warfare" to produce a theory on the "strategy of exhaustion".
His theory defied popular military thinking of the time, which was strongly in
favour of victory in battle, yet World War I would soon demonstrate the flaws
of a mindless "strategy of annihilation". At a time when
industrialisation was rapidly changing naval technology, one American
strategist, Alfred Thayer Mahan, almost single-handedly brought the field of
naval strategy up to date. Influenced by Jomini's principles of strategy, he
saw that in the coming wars, where economic strategy could be as important as
military strategy, control of the sea granted the power to control the trade
and resources needed to wage war. Mahan pushed the concept of the "big
navy" and an expansionist view where defence was achieved by controlling
the sea approaches rather than fortifying the coast. His theories contributed
to the naval arms race between 1898 and 1914.
World War I:
At the start of World War I strategy was dominated by the offensive thinking
that had been in vogue since 1870, despite the more recent experiences of the
Second Boer War (1899–1902) and Russo-Japanese War (1904–05), where
the machine gun demonstrated its defensive capabilities. By the end of 1914,
the Western Front was a stalemate and all ability to maneuver strategically was
lost. The combatants resorted to a "strategy of attrition". The
German battle at Verdun, the British on the Somme and at Passchendaele were
among the first wide-scale battles intended to wear down the enemy. Attrition
was time-consuming so the duration of World War I battles often stretched to
weeks and months. The problem with attrition was that the use of fortified
defenses in depth generally required a ratio of ten attackers to one defender,
or a level of artillery support which was simply not feasible until late 1917,
for any reasonable chance of victory. The ability of the defender to move
troops using interior lines prevented the possibility of fully exploiting any
breakthrough with the level of technology then attainable. Perhaps the most
controversial aspect of strategy in World War I was the difference among the
British between the "Western" viewpoint (held by Field Marshal Haig)
and the "Eastern"; the former being that all effort should be
directed against the German Army, the latter that more useful work could be
done by attacking Germany's allies. The term "Knocking away the
props" was used, perhaps as an unfortunate consequence of the fact that
all of Germany's allies lay south of (i.e. 'beneath') her on the map.
Apologists and defenders of the Western viewpoint make the valid point that
Germany's allies were more than once rescued from disaster or rendered capable
of holding their own or making substantial gains by the provision of German
troops, arms or military advisers, whereas those allies did not at any time
provide a similar function for Germany. That is, it was Germany which was the
prop, and her allies (particularly Bulgaria and Austria-Hungary) did not suffer
significant reverses until Germany's ability to come to their aid was grossly
impaired. On other fronts, there was still room for the use of strategy of
maneuver. The Germans executed a perfect battle of annihilation against the
Russians at the Battle of Tannenberg. In 1915 Britain and France launched the
well-intentioned but poorly conceived and ultimately fruitless Dardanelles
Campaign, combining naval power and an amphibious landing, in an effort to aid
their Russian ally and knock the Ottoman Empire out of the war. The Palestine
campaign was dominated by cavalry, which flourished in the local terrain, and
the British achieved two breakthrough victories at Gaza (1917) and Megiddo
(1918). Colonel T. E. Lawrence and other British officers led Arab irregulars
on a guerrilla campaign against the Ottomans, using strategy and tactics
developed during the Boer Wars.
World War I saw armies on a scale never before experienced. The British, who
had always relied on a strong navy and a small regular army, were forced to
undertake a rapid expansion of the army. This outpaced the rate of training of
generals and staff officers able to handle such a mammoth force, and
overwhelmed the ability of British industry to equip it with the necessary
weapons and adequate high-quality munitions until late in the war.
Technological advances also had a huge influence on strategy: aerial
reconnaissance, artillery techniques, poison gas, the automobile and tank
(though the latter was, even at the end of the war, still in its infancy),
telephone and radio telegraphy. More so than in previous wars, military
strategy in World War I was directed by the grand strategy of a coalition of
nations; the Entente on one side and the Central Powers on the other. Society
and economy were mobilized for total war. Attacks on the enemy's economy
included Britain's use of a naval blockade and Germany employing submarine
warfare against merchant shipping. Unity of command became a question when the
various nation states began coordinating assaults and defenses. Under the
pressure of horrendously destructive German attacks beginning on March 21,
1918, the Entente eventually settled under Field Marshal Ferdinand Foch. The
Germans generally led the Central Powers, though German authority diminished
and lines of command became confused at the end of the war. World War I
strategy was dominated by the "Spirit of the Offensive", where
generals resorted almost to mysticism in terms of a soldier's personal
"attitude" in order to break the stalemate; this led to nothing but
bloody slaughter as troops in close ranks charged machine guns. Each side
developed an alternate thesis. The British under Winston Churchill developed
tank warfare, with which they eventually won the war. The Germans developed a
"doctrine of autonomy", the forerunner of both blitzkrieg and modern
infantry tactics, using groups of stormtroopers, who would advance in small
mutually covering groups from cover to cover with "autonomy" to
exploit any weakness they discovered in enemy defenses. Almost all the
blitzkrieg commanders of World War II, particularly Erwin Rommel, were
stormtroopers in World War I. After the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, Germany
launched and almost succeeded in a final offensive. However, the new tactics of
autonomy revealed a weakness in terms of overall coordination and direction.
The March offensive, intended to drive a wedge between the French and British
armies, turn on the latter and destroy it, lost direction and became driven by
its territorial gains, its original purpose neglected.
World War I ended when the ability of the German army to fight became so
diminished that Germany asked for peace conditions. The German military,
exhausted by the efforts of the March offensives and dispirited by their
failure, was first seriously defeated during the Battle of Amiens (8–11
August 1918) and the German homefront entered general revolt over a lack of
food and destruction of the economy. Victory for the Entente was almost assured
by that point, and the fact of Germany's military impotence was driven home in
the following hundred days. In this time, the Entente reversed the gains the
Germans had made in the first part of the year, and the British Army
(spearheaded by the Canadians and Australians) finally broke the Hindenburg
defensive system. Though his methods are questioned, Britain's Field Marshal
Haig was ultimately proved correct in his grand strategic vision: "We
cannot hope to win until we have defeated the German Army." By the end of
the war, the best German troops were dead and the remainder were under
continuous pressure on all parts of the Western Front, a consequence in part of
an almost endless supply of fresh American reinforcements (which the Germans
were unable to match) and in part of industry at last supplying the weakened
Entente armies with the firepower to replace the men they lacked (whilst
Germany wanted for all sorts of materials thanks to the naval blockade).
Interior lines thus became meaningless as Germany had nothing more to offer its
allies. The props eventually fell, but only because they were themselves no
longer supported. The role of the tank in World War I strategy is often poorly
understood. Its supporters saw it as the weapon of victory, and many observers
since have accused the high commands (especially the British) of
shortsightedness in this matter, particularly in view of what tanks have
achieved since. Nevertheless, the World War I tank's limitations, imposed by
the limits of contemporary engineering technology, have to be borne in mind.
They were slow (men could run, and frequently walk, faster); vulnerable (to
artillery) due to their size, clumsiness and inability to carry armour against
anything but rifle and machine gun ammunition; extremely uncomfortable
(conditions inside them often incapacitating crews with engine fumes and heat,
and driving some mad with noise); and often despicably unreliable (frequently
failing to make it to their targets due to engine or track failures). This was
the factor behind the seemingly mindless retention of large bodies of cavalry,
which even in 1918, with armies incompletely mechanised, were still the only
armed force capable of moving significantly faster than an infantryman on foot.
It was not until the relevant technology (in engineering and communications)
matured between the wars that the tank and the airplane could be forged into
the co-ordinated force needed to truly restore manoeuvre to warfare.
Inter war:
In the years following World War I, two of the technologies that had been
introduced during that conflict, the aircraft and the tank, became the subject
of strategic study. The leading theorist of air power was Italian general
Giulio Douhet, who believed that future wars would be won or lost in the air.
The air force would carry the offensive, and the role of the ground forces
would be defensive only. Douhet's doctrine of strategic bombing meant striking
at the enemy's heartland—his cities, industry and communications. Air
power would thereby reduce his willingness and capacity to fight. At this time
the idea of the aircraft carrier and its capabilities also started to change
thinking in those countries with large fleets, but nowhere as much as in Japan.
The UK and US seem to have seen the carrier as a defensive weapon, and their
designs mirrored this; the Japanese Imperial Navy seem to have developed a new
offensive strategy based on the power projection these made possible. British
general J. F. C. Fuller, architect of the first great tank battle at Cambrai,
and his contemporary, B. H. Liddell Hart, were amongst the most prominent
advocates of mechanization and motorization of the army in Britain. In Germany,
study groups were set up by Hans von Seeckt, commander of the Reichswehr
Truppenamt, for 57 areas of strategy and tactics to learn from World War I and
to adapt strategy to avoid the stalemate and then defeat they had suffered. All
seem to have seen the strategic shock value of mobility and the new
possibilities made possible by motorised forces. Both saw that the armoured
fighting vehicle demonstrated firepower, mobility and protection. The Germans
seem to have seen more clearly the need to make all branches of the Army as
mobile as possible to maximise the results of this strategy. It would negate
the static defences of the trench and machine gun and restore the strategic
principles of manoeuvre and offense. Nevertheless, it was the British Army
which was the only[citation needed] one truly mechanised at the beginning of
the Second World War, the Germans still relying on horse traction for a large
portion of their artillery. The innovative German Major (later General) Heinz
Guderian developed the motorised part of this strategy as the head of one of
the Truppenamt groups and may have incorporated Fuller's and Liddell Hart's
ideas to amplify the groundbreaking Blitzkrieg effect that was seen used by
Germany against Poland in 1939 and later against France in 1940. France, still
committed to stationary World War I strategies, was completely surprised and
summarily overwhelmed by Germany's mobile combined arms doctrine and Guderian's
Panzer Corps.
Technological change had an enormous effect on strategy, but little effect on
leadership. The use of telegraph and later radio, along with improved
transport, enabled the rapid movement of large numbers of men. One of Germany's
key enablers in mobile warfare was the use of radios, where these were put into
every tank. However, the number of men that one officer could effectively
control had, if anything, declined. The increases in the size of the armies led
to an increase in the number of officers. Although the officer ranks in the US
Army did swell, in the German army the ratio of officers to total men remained
steady.
World War II:
German Pre-war Inter-war Germany had as its main strategic goals the
re-establishment of Germany as a European great power and the complete
annulment of the Versailles treaty of 1919. After Adolf Hitler and the Nazi
party took power in 1933, Germany's political goals also included the
accumulation of Lebensraum ("Living space") for the Germanic
"race" and the elimination of Communism as a political rival to
Nazism. The destruction of European Jewry, while not strictly a strategic
objective, was a political goal of the Nazi regime linked to the vision of a
German-dominated Europe, and especially to the Generalplan Ost for a
depopulated east which Germany could colonize. Until the mid-1930s, Germany's
ability to realize these goals was limited by her weakened military and
economic position. Hitler's strategy involved building up German military and
economic strength through re-armament, while seeking to avoid an early war by
diplomatic engagement with France, Britain and (later) the Soviet Union
(Stalin-Hitler Pact of August 1939). One by one, Hitler successfully repudiated
the terms the Versailles treaty, using skilful diplomacy to avoid triggering
war. After starting open re-armament in 1935, he carried out the re-occupation
of the Rhineland in 1936, and then the diplomatic annexation of Austria
(Anschluss) and of Czechoslovakia in 1938 and 1939 (Munich Agreement, September
1938). This risky political strategy proved initially successful, consolidating
internal support for the Nazi regime and greatly strengthening Germany's
strategic position. But the March 1939 annexation of rump Czechoslovakia, in
violation of the Munich Agreement signed only months before, forced a change in
Franco-British policy from an emphasis on avoiding war (Appeasement) to an
emphasis on war preparation, of which an important feature was the declaration
of Franco-British guarantees of Polish independence. When Germany invaded
Poland in September 1939, Britain and France declared war (3 September 1939).
War strategy:
Further information: Nazi foreign policy debate:
Hitler's strategy for war was laid out in Mein Kampf (1925/1926). Whether
Hitler intended global or merely European conquest, or whether he even had a
plan for war in advance is debated; see Nazi foreign policy (historiographic
debate). In Mein Kampf, Hitler had imagined a short war against France, and
then the conquest of the USSR. He had wrongly assumed that Britain would be a
German ally in the west against France, and so he did not foresee an enduring
war in the west. Once the Second World War had begun with France and Britain as
allies, German strategy aimed to win a short war in France and to force Britain
to the negotiating table. After the conquest of France in May-June 1940,
Churchill's refusal to surrender or to negotiate on terms favorable for Germany
put the German gamble in jeopardy. Germany could not match Britain on the open
sea and had not prepared its army for operations across the Channel. Instead,
the Wehrmacht hoped to strangle Britain's economy through success in the Battle
of the Atlantic (1939-1945) and the Battle of Britain (1940). In June 1941
Germany invaded the USSR (Operation Barbarossa) to carry out the second part of
Hitler's strategy. The campaign plan envisaged defeating the USSR in a single
summer / fall campaign, but Barbarossa failed to achieve any of its major
objectives. In December 1941 Japan attacked the USA and Germany declared war on
the USA shortly afterwards. Through the summer and fall of 1942, German
strategy to win the war remained based on defeating the USSR.
British:
Since the Entente Cordiale which had won the First World War, Britain's
strategy for continental war was based on alliance with France and later
unsuccessful efforts to engage Fascist Italy and the USSR in an effort to
contain Germany. Confronted with the rise of Hitler's power on the continent in
1933, and weakened economically by the Great Depression, Great Britain sought
initially to avoid or delay war through diplomacy (Appeasement), while at the
same time re-arming (Neville Chamberlain's European Policy). Emphasis for
re-armament was given to air forces with the view that these would be most
useful in any future war with Germany. By 1939, Allied efforts to avert war had
failed, and Germany had signed alliances with both Italy (Pact of Steel) and
the USSR (Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact). In August 1939, in a final effort to
contain Germany, Britain and France guaranteed Polish independence
(Anglo-Polish military alliance). Upon the outbreak of war in September 1939,
British rearmament was not yet complete, although the Royal Air Force had been
greatly expanded and programmes for new aircraft and equipment such as radar
defences were just coming to fruition. Britain remained incapable of offensive
operations except for strategic bombing, and this was relatively ineffective in
the early war. After the fall of France in mid 1940 and Italian entry into the
war on the Axis side, Britain and her commonwealth allies found themselves
alone against most of Europe. British strategy was one of survival, defending
the British isles directly in the Battle of Britain and indirectly by defeating
Germany in the Battle of the Atlantic and the combined Axis powers in the North
African Campaign. Through this period, and until the German invasion of the
USSR in June 1941, there was no possibility of Britain winning the war alone,
and so British Grand Strategy aimed to bring the USA into the war on the allied
side. Prime Minister Churchill devoted much of his diplomatic efforts to this
goal. In August 1941, at the Atlantic Conference he met US President Roosevelt
in the first of many wartime meetings wherein allied war strategy was jointly
decided. In December 1941, following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the
United States entered the war. Britain was now also at war with imperial Japan,
whose forces inflicted rapid defeats on British forces in Asia, capturing Hong
Kong, Malaya, Singapore and Burma. Nevertheless, Churchill expressed the view
that with the entry of the USA into the war, ultimate victory was assured for
the Allies. "All the rest was merely the proper application of
overwhelming force". From this point onward, the strategy of the Allies,
other than the USSR, is better addressed as joint Allied Strategy
European Allies:
In the December 1941, at the Arcadia Conference, the Allied leaders agreed to
the "Germany first" principle whereby Germany was to be defeated
first, and then Japan. However, Allied land forces would not be capable of
invading the mainland of Europe for years, even as Joseph Stalin pressed for
the western allies to alleviate pressure on the Eastern front. Supporting the
Soviet war effort was a significant element of Allied strategy, and significant
aid was shipped to the USSR through the Lend-Lease programme. Strategic
warfare, and especially strategic bombing, was a supporting component of Allied
strategy. Through 1942 and 1943, the Allies gradually won the war at sea and in
the air, blockading Germany and subjecting her to a strategic bombing campaign
of increasing effectiveness Strategic bombing during World War II. In January
1943, at the Casablanca Conference, the Allies agreed to demand Axis
unconditional surrender, a war aim which implied the physical occupation of
Germany with land forces. While building up strength for an invasion of
continental Europe, the Allies pursued an indirect strategy by invading Europe
from the South. After defeating Axis forces in North Africa (the invasion of
French North-Africa), Sicily and southern Italy were invaded, leading to the
defeat of Fascist Italy. Churchill especially favoured a Southern strategy,
aiming to attack the "soft underbelly" of Axis Europe through Italy,
Greece and the Balkans in a strategy similar to the First World War idea of
"knocking out the supports". Roosevelt favoured a more direct
approach through northern Europe, and with the Invasion of Normandy in June
1944, the weight of Allied effort shifted to the direct conquest of Germany.
From 1944, as German defeat became more and more inevitable, the shape of
post-war Europe assumed greater importance in Allied strategy. At the Second
Quebec Conference in September 1944, the Allies agreed to partition and
de-industrialize a defeated Germany so as to render her permanently unable to
wage war Morgenthau Plan. After the war, this plan was abandoned as unworkable.
At the Tehran Conference Allied strategy adopted its final major component with
the acceptance of Soviet conditions for a sphere of influence in Eastern
Europe, to include eastern Germany and Berlin.
Soviet:
Early Soviet strategy aimed to avoid or delay war, while developing the central
government's hold over the state and expanding the industrial base. Soviet
economy and military was weak, but rapidly expanding in an intense
industrialization process. The USSR had been overtly hostile to Nazi Germany
for most of the pre-war period, but the failure of appeasement convinced Stalin
that the Allies were actively seeking a Nazi–Soviet war. The Soviet
government doubted that a war against Germany could be avoided. However,
negotiations were continued in order to, at the very least, buy time and permit
the Soviets to secure the Soviet–German border through expansion and
pressure on strategically important states perceived as possible German allies
in a future war. The signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop pact gave the USSR
freedom to, in its view, preempt hostile action from nations along its Western
border. The invasion in the Barbarossa campaign of 1941 came earlier than
expected to the Soviet leadership, resulting in the catastrophic loss of over 4
million Soviet soldiers killed or captured. Nevertheless, the USSR managed to
halt the German advance at the outskirts of Moscow and Leningrad. With spies
providing the certain knowledge that Japanese forces in the far east would not
attack Siberia, the Soviets were able to transfer large numbers of experienced
forces from the far east, and in the Winter of 1941/1942 they used them to
counter-attack the German Army Group Centre in front of Moscow. As the army was
being defeated and giving up ground in the initial assault, a gigantic
operation was staged to move economic capacity from the Western areas that were
about to be overrun, to Eastern regions in the Urals and central Asia that were
out of reach of the Germans. Entire factories, including their labour force,
were simply moved, and what couldn't be taken was destroyed ("scorched
earth"). As a result, even though huge territories were captured by the
Germans, the production potential of the Soviet economy was not correspondingly
harmed, and the factories shifted to mass production of military equipment
quickly. Even before the war, Soviet industrialization had brought Soviet GDP
to a level roughly equivalent to Germany. Although a significant part of the
urban population had been captured by Germany in the 1941 campaign, the Soviet
economy immediately went to a total war footing and was soon outproducing the
German economy in war materiel. It quickly became apparent that the war in the
east would be pitiless and total. Soviet strategy was therefore aimed at
preserving the state, at whatever cost, and then the ultimate defeat and
conquest of Germany. This strategy was successful. By 1943, the USSR was
confident in final victory and new aim of Soviet strategy became securing a
favourable post-war Europe. At the Tehran Conference of 1943, Stalin secured
acquiescence to a Soviet sphere in influence from his western allies.
Japanese:
Japanese World War II strategy was driven by two factors: the desire to expand
their territories on the mainland of Asia (China and Manchuria), and the need
to secure the supply of raw resources they didn't have themselves, particularly
oil. Since their quest after the former (conquest of Chinese provinces)
endangered the latter (an oil boycott by the US and its allies),[citation
needed] the Japanese government saw no other option than to conquer the oil
sources in South-East Asia. Since these were controlled by American allies, war
with the USA was seen as inevitable; thus, Japanese leaders decided it would be
best to deal a severe blow to the U.S. first. This was executed in the Pearl
Harbor strike, crippling the American battle fleet. Japan hoped it would take
America so long to rebuild, by the time she was able to return in force in the
Pacific, she would consider the new balance of power a "fait
accompli", and negotiate a peace. However, the attack on Pearl Harbor
failed to destroy the crucial targets (aircraft carriers and, most crucially
for Japan's ability to hold island bases,submarines) and ignored others (oil
tank farms, power station), thus the U.S. Navy was not weakened enough to force
withdrawal. The psychological effect also caused the U.S. population and armed
forces to fully mobilize for war. South-East Asia was quickly conquered
(Philippines, Indochina, Malaysia and the Dutch East Indies). After Japan's
vital aircraft carrier force was destroyed in the Battle of Midway, the
Japanese had to revert to a stiff defense they kept up for the remainder of the
war.
American:
With both Japan and the US fighting two-front wars (against each other in the
Pacific, and additionally the US in Europe and the Japanese in China), the far
greater American economic power enabled the US forces to replace battle losses
considerably faster and to eventually outgun the Japanese. In several aircraft
carrier battles, the initiative was taken from the Japanese, and after the
Battle of Midway, the Japanese navy was rendered helpless, effectively giving
the Americans vast naval superiority. After the Japanese were forced into the
defensive in the second half of 1942, the Americans were confronted with
heavily fortified garrisons on small islands. They decided on a strategy of
"island hopping", leaving the strongest garrisons alone, just cutting
off their supply via naval blockades and bombardment, and securing bases of
operation on the lightly defended islands instead. The most notable of these
island battles was the Battle of Iwo Jima, where the American victory paved the
way for the aerial bombing of the Japanese mainland, which culminated in the
atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Bombing of Tokyo that forced
Japan to surrender.
Australian:
Australia's historical ties with Britain meant that with the commencement of
World War II her armies were sent overseas to contribute to battles in Europe.
Fear from the north was so understated that at the outbreak of open warfare
with Japan, Australia itself was extremely vulnerable to invasion (possible
invasion plans were considered by the Japanese high command, though there was
strong opposition). Australia's policy became based entirely on domestic
defense following the attacks on Pearl Harbor and British assets in the South
Pacific. Defying strong British opposition, Australian Prime Minister John
Curtin recalled most troops from the European conflict for the defense of the
nation. Australia's defensive doctrine saw a fierce campaign fought along the
Kokoda track in New Guinea. This campaign sought to further stretch Japanese
supply lines, preventing the invasion of the Australian mainland until the
arrival of fresh American troops and the return of seasoned Australian soldiers
from Europe. This can be seen as a variant of the war of attrition strategy,
where the defender—out of necessity—had to hold the aggressor at a
semi-static defensive line, rather than falling back in the face of superior
numbers. This method is in stark contrast to the Russian scorched earth policy
against Napoleon in 1812, where the defenders yielded home territory in favour
of avoiding open battle. In both cases the lack of supplies was successful in
blunting the assaults, following exhaustive defensive efforts.
Communist China's strategy:
The Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong developed a military strategy called
people's war. It aimed at creating and maintaining support of the local
population, and draw the enemy deep into the interior where the force adopting
the strategy would exhaust them through a mix of guerrilla and conventional
warfare. The strategy was first used by the Communists against the forces of
the Nationalist Government led by Chiang Kai-shek in the Chinese Civil War in
the 1930s. During and after the arduous Long March, the Communist forces, who
were dramatically reduced by physical exhaustion, disease and warfare, were in
danger of destruction by the pursuing Nationalist forces. Mao then convinced
other high-ranking political officers in the party to acquire the support of
the local population whilst fighting their way northwards from the Nationalist
forces. Shortly thereafter he formulated the concept of people's war, promising
land reform programs to the local populace and execution of the local landlords
in the areas the Communists control. Using this strategy not only prevented the
Communist leadership from collapsing, but also raised popular support across
China, which eventually allowed them to take total control over the Chinese
mainland. The people's war is not only a military strategy but also a political
one. In its original formulation by Mao Zedong, people's war exploits the few
advantages that a small revolutionary movement has against a government's power
including a large and well-equipped army. People's war strategically avoids
decisive battles, since their tiny military force would easily be routed in an
all-out confrontation with the government's army. Instead, it favours a
three-stage strategy of protracted warfare, engaging only in carefully chosen
battles that can realistically be won. Relying on the local population and
using small military units, ensures that there are few problems concerning
logistics and supplies. In stage one, the revolutionary force sets up in a
remote area with mountainous or otherwise difficult terrain where its enemy is
weak, and attempts to establish a local stronghold known as a revolutionary
base area. As it grows in power, it enters stage two, establishes other
revolutionary base areas, where it may exercise governing power and gain
popular support through political programmes, such as land reform. Eventually
in stage three, the movement has enough strength to encircle and capture cities
of increasing size, until finally it seizes power in the entire country. Within
the Chinese Red Army, later to be called as the People's Liberation Army, the
concept of People's War was the basis of strategy against the Japanese and
Nationalist forces, and also against a hypothetical Russian invasion of China.
The concept of people's war became less important with the collapse of the
Soviet Union and the increasing possibility of conflict with the United States
over Taiwan.
The strategy was utilized in the early 1950s by the hastily formed People's
Volunteer Army during the Korean War, to garner support from the local Korean
populace to win the war by driving the United Nations forces from the
peninsula. At the battles of Chongchon river valley and Lake Changjin, the army
employed guerrilla tactics in full scale, following the people's war doctrine.
However, as they marched towards the South under Mao's stern orders after their
decisive victories in northern Korea, they were met by an indifferent and
sometimes hostile Southern population[34] who, despite intimidation, were not
willing to help them. This prevented them from defeating the UN forces in Korea
and, after their hard-fought victory at the Third Battle of Seoul, they were
beaten in the open by UN forces in the conclusion of their Third Phase
Campaign. Later on the war turned into a stalemated two-year confrontation
between the opposing forces. Thus, years after the war, the Chinese government
began a series of army modernization and professionalization that would
radically change the concept of the strategy, and in the 1980s and 1990s the
concept of people's war was changed to include more high-technology weaponry.
The people's war strategy was also employed in countries around the world such
as Cuba, Nicaragua, Nepal, Philippines, the United Kingdom (where the IRA was
in rebellion in Northern Ireland and applied this strategy to urban warfare)
and elsewhere. The people's war in the first three countries mentioned have
been spectacularly successful, marking government transitions in these
countries, while elsewhere such as in Peru it has been unsuccessful. The
people's war in the Philippines that was long since employed by the insurgent
New People's Army, however, made the Communist insurgency there the longest in
world history,.[35] In India and Turkey there are still ongoing insurgencies
where the rebels use this strategy.
Cold War:
The strategy of the Cold War was that of containment, and it was a generation
dominated by the threat of total world annihilation through the use of nuclear
weapons. Deterrence was a part of containment via retributive intimidation from
the risk of mutually assured destruction. As a consequence, it was also a war
in which attacks were not exchanged between the two main rivals, the United
States and the Soviet Union. Instead, the war was fought through proxies.
Instead of mainly being confined to Europe or the Pacific, the entire world was
the battlefield, with countries rather than armies acting as main players. The
only constant rule was that troops of the Soviet Union and the United States
could not overtly fight with each other. Military strategy involved bipolar
powers with global actors who could strike an opponent with nationally
debilitating destruction in a matter of minutes from land, air, and sea. With
the advent of weapons of mass destruction that could decide a war by
themselves, strategies shifted away from a focus on the application of
conventional weaponry to a greater focus on espionage and intelligence
assessment, especially after the exposure of the Atomic spies. The difference
between tactics, strategy and grand strategy began to melt during the Cold War
as command and communication technologies improved to a greater extent, in
first world armed forces. The third world armed forces controlled by the two
superpowers found that grand strategy, strategy and tactics, if anything, moved
further apart as the command of the armies fell under the control of super
power leaders. American cold warriors like Dean Acheson and George C. Marshall
quickly recognized that the key to victory was the economic defeat of the
Soviet Union. The Soviet Union had adopted an aggressive posture of Communist
expansionism following the end of World War II, with the United States and its
strong navy quickly finding that it had to aggressively defend much of the
world from the Soviet Union and the spread of communism. Strategies during the
Cold War also dealt with nuclear attack and retaliation. The United States
maintained a policy of limited first strike throughout the Cold War. In the
event of a Soviet attack on the Western Front, resulting in a breakthrough, the
United States would use tactical nuclear weapons to stop the attack. So, if the
Warsaw Pact attacked using conventional weapons, the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO) would use tactical nukes. The Soviet Union would respond
with an all-out nuclear attack, resulting in a similar attack from the United
States, with all the consequences the exchange would entail.
By contrast, Soviet strategy in the Cold War was dominated by the desire to
prevent, at all costs, the recurrence of an invasion of Russian soil. The
Soviet Union nominally adopted a policy of no first use, which in fact was a
posture of launch on warning. Other than that, the USSR adapted to some degree
to the prevailing changes in the NATO strategic policies that are divided by
periods as:
Strategy of massive retaliation (1950s)
(Russian: Strategy of flexible reaction (1960s)
Strategies of realistic threat and containment (1970s)
Strategy of direct confrontation (1980s) one of the elements of which became
the new highly effective high-precision targeting weapons. Strategic Defense
Initiative (also known as "Star Wars") during its 1980s development
which became a core part of the strategic doctrine based on Defense
containment. Fortunately for all sides, the all-out nuclear World War III
between NATO and the Warsaw Pact did not take place. The United States recently
(April 2010) acknowledged a new approach to its nuclear policy which describes
the weapons' purpose as "primarily" or "fundamentally" to
deter or respond to a nuclear attack.
Post Cold War:
See also: Asymmetric warfare and Network-centric warfare Strategy in the post
Cold War is shaped by the global geopolitical situation: a number of potent
powers in a multipolar array which has arguably come to be dominated by the
hyperpowe r status of the United States, which increasingly relies on advanced
technology to minimize casualties and to improve efficiency. Technological
leaps brought by the Digital Revolution are essential for the U.S. strategy.
The gap in strategy today (from a Western viewpoint) lies in what Americans
call "asymmetric warfare": the battle against guerrilla forces by
conventional national armed forces. The classical strategic triumvirate of
politics/military/populace is very weak against protracted warfare of
paramilitary forces such as the Provisional Irish Republican Army, Hezbollah,
ETA, the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), and Al-Qaeda. The ability of
conventional forces to deliver utility (effect) from their hugely powerful
forces is largely nullified by the difficulties of distinguishing and
separating combatants from the civilian populace in whose company they hide.
The use of the military by the politicians to police areas seen as bases for
these guerrillas leads to them[who?] becoming targets themselves which
eventually undermines the support of the populace from whom they come and whose
values they represent. Parties to conflict which see themselves as vastly or
temporarily inferior may adopt a strategy of "hunkering down" -
witness Iraq in 1991[40] or Yugoslavia in 1999.[41] The primary effect of
insurgent elements upon conventional force strategy is realized in the twofold
exploitation of the inherent violence of military operations. Conventional
armies face political attrition for each action they take. Insurgent forces can
cause harm and create chaos (whereby the conventional army suffers a loss of
confidence and esteem); or they can drive the conventional elements into an
attack which further exacerbates the civilian condition. The major militaries
of today are largely set up[by whom?] to fight the "last war"
(previous war) and hence have huge armoured and conventionally configured
infantry formations backed up by air-forces and navies designed to support or
prepare for these forces.[42] Many are today deployed against guerrilla-style
opponents where their strengths cannot be used to effect. The mass formations
of industrial warfare are often seen[by whom?] as much less effective than the
unconventional forces that modern militaries may also possess. The new
opponents operate at a local level, whereas industrial armed forces work at a
much higher "theatre" level. The nervous system of these new
opponents is largely political rather than military-hierarchical and adapted to
the local supporting populace who hide them. The centre provides the political
idea and driving logic, perhaps with overall direction and some funding. Local
groups decide their own plans, raise much of their own funding and may be more
or less aligned to the centre's aims. Defeat of guerilla forces (when revealed)
does not disable this type of organisation, many modern attack strategies will
tend to increase the power of the group they intend to weaken. A new more
political strategy is perhaps more appropriate here - with military backing.
Such a strategy has been illustrated in the war against the IRA, though an
adoption and codification are unclear.
Netwar:
A main point in asymmetric warfare is the nature of paramilitary organizations
such as Al-Qaeda which are involved in guerrilla military actions but which are
not traditional organizations with a central authority defining their military
and political strategies. Organizations such as Al-Qaeda may exist as a sparse
network of groups lacking central coordination, making them more difficult to
confront following standard strategic approaches. This new field of strategic
thinking is tackled by what is now defined as netwar.
|
|
