Strategy
Strategy
The word “strategy,” derived from Greek, originally meant the “art of the general,” or “generalship.” It has long since been broadened to include also the art of the admiral and of the air commander. So dynamic and pregnant a word is bound to be applied also to numerous other kinds of competitive situations, including commerce and games, and today one speaks of testing various “strategies of play” over a broad range of game situations. Such usage is, however, comparatively recent, occurring mostly since World War II. In this article we shall be concerned only with the classic application of the term strategy to war, including relevant aspects of the planning processes prior to, and in preparation for, war.
Strategy is distinguished from the related term “tactics” in ways which are well understood, though variously stated. Thus, the Oxford English Dictionary asserts that tactics refers “only to the mechanical movement of bodies set in motion by” strategy. Mahan proposed as a distinction between tactics and strategy the fact of contact. Tactics thus refers to the localized hostilities that occur where adversaries are in contact; strategy, to the basic dispositions of strength that constitute the entire conduct of a campaign or of a war. Or one can say that tactics is fighting and strategy is planning where and how to fight, with the “how” construed so as to exclude the details.
Another meaningful and even necessary distinction stresses the different levels at which the pertinent operations or decisions take place. Although one might speak appropriately of the “strategy” of a battle, referring thereby to the commander‘s purpose and essential dispositions of force, one would generally apply the term only to a large and critical battle and to the decisions of the commander in chief. Lesser commanders would be concerned with tactics. The normal connotations of the word “strategy” suggest, however, even higher levels of direction. Some have attempted, though abortively, to introduce terms like “grand strategy” to refer to the very highest levels of decision making affecting the most basic and essential dispositions for the conduct of a war, such as the major decisions made jointly by Churchill and Roosevelt during World War II, the most basic and dominant of these being the decision to defeat Germany first and Japan second.
Although it is pointless to resist established usage, one might note in passing that the use of the term “strategic” to describe a certain kind of aerial bombing has been misleading and therefore unfortunate. “Strategic bombing” applies to a type of operation characterized by deep penetration into the heartland of the enemy country, against targets selected for military or economic (i.e., supportive of the military) reasons or simply for purposes of terrorizing civilians. It is distinguished from “tactical bombing,” which includes short-range operations, often in close support of friendly ground forces, and intermediate-range, or “interdiction,” bombing, usually against the logistics or supply system of the enemy ground forces. The distinction is essentially one of zones of penetration and attack, with the concurrent implication, at least on the part of its advocates, that the targets for strategic bombing are radically different in kind from those sought in tactical bombing and somehow more fundamental in importance.
Professional neglect of strategic thought. The student in quest of the written strategic thought of the past will be startled to discover how lean it is, especially in a world that has known so much war. Actually, the frequency and persistence of war from remote antiquity to the present—for long periods one might almost speak of its continuity—provide one clue to the scarcity of written works. Men who spent much of their adult lives fighting were apparently content to learn their art in the field and by communication of relevant wisdom through word of mouth.
Moreover, until the early part of the nineteenth century, weapons and methods of fighting changed slowly, as did the conventions which guided those methods. The challenge of sharply changed conditions was generally absent. Even the introduction of gunpowder offered no such change. At the time it was so unimportant that chroniclers neglected to note the precise date of its first use on a European battlefield, sometime in the early fourteenth century. It took two centuries for the crossbow to be displaced by the musket, which developed when the touchhole gave way to the matchlock (late in the fifteenth century), thus permitting use of a trigger.
Another part of the explanation concerns the character and number of the potential users of strategic lore, who would also normally be the contributors to its literature. For most of the span of our civilization the leaders of armies have been aristocrats, often princes and kings, and those surrounding them have been of the same caste, which has never been known as a society of scholars. It is significant that the great Marshal de Saxe, first soldier of France during part of the reign of Louis xv, wrote his brief “Reveries Upon the Art of War” (1757) relatively early in his career, during a period of illness when he could do nothing else, and wrote nothing subsequently. The more modern practitioners of the military arts too have been committed to the idea, no doubt correctly on balance, that the first function of the commander is not strategic decision making but the leadership of military forces, whether large or small. Among the great military powers of modern times, it has always been axiomatic that the avenue to promotion in peacetime and, especially, in war is success in command, not good staff work.
A related conviction long cherished by professional military officers is, in the words of Field Marshal Lord Wavell, “that tactics, the art of handling troops on the battlefield, is and always will be a more difficult and more important part of the general‘s task than strategy, the art of bringing forces to the battlefield in a favorable position.” Of strategy, Wavell added, “the main principles . . . are simple and easy to grasp” (1953, p. 97). It is remarkable that the reflective Wavell should have considered tactics more important as well as more difficult than strategy. The fatal error in his own military career was one of strategic judgment—his approving early in 1941 the commitment of a major portion of his North African forces to the British expedition to Greece without having first disposed of Rommel in the desert. What has been certainly true, however, is that tactics has been much more than strategy the province of the professional soldier, since the former is in many ways more esoteric and makes far heavier demands on military virtues like resolution and courage.
Finally, one should remember that the market for strategic insight has always been a limited one. Actual and potential commanders in chief were never numerous. Until very recently, the great majority of professional military officers could live out their careers without ever being called upon to make or to offer advice upon a strategic decision. Their training took full cognizance of this fact.
Background of strategy. The “roots of strategy” have been traced as far back as the writings, or collected maxims, of Sun Tzu (c. 500 B.C.). His “Art of War,” however, is today merely quaint. The Greeks, especially Xenophon and Thucydides, are more important, although they did not write discourses on strategy. But included in their chronicles or histories are long statements, supposedly quoting Greek generals, which often reveal fascinating strategic insight. Another early author, Vegetius (“The Military Institutions of the Romans,” c. a.d. 390), deals more with tactics than strategy, though his book is said to have been used by commanders in the Middle Ages and later. Niccolò Machiavelli should also be mentioned, although interestingly enough, his Art of War (1521), engrossed with problems of tactics and organizational reform, probably contains less about strategy than some of his other works. Again, the writings of Marshal Maurice de Saxe (1757) and Friedrich n (1747) are absorbed largely in detailed tactical concerns and are interesting today mostly for what they reveal of war in their own times. Only the collection of what are purported to be Napoleon‘s “maxims” begin to show some live connection with our own times. In short, the roots of modern strategy really begin at the end of the eighteenth century.
However, rather than catalogue the contributions of past writers whose works have dissolved into the stream of modern military thinking, it is preferable to look back to see which thinkers stand out as major contributors to the ideas and doctrines that in one form or another represent our living strategic inheritance.
Mahan . Before World War II, theoretical strategy was divided into three parts: naval, air, and land strategy. In the field of naval strategy the figure of the American naval officer Alfred Thayer Mahan was still supreme. His strategic ideas represented mostly the rediscovery of principles that had held sway in sailing days. More clearly than any predecessor, Mahan illuminated the concept of “command of the sea.” He distinguished sharply between attaining command, which is the function of the battle fleet, and exercising it, which is done by cruisers and convoy-escort vessels. He felt that mere commerce raiding had always failed to be “decisive of great issues,” and being innately conservative, he missed seeing the special strategic potential of the submarine in that role. He died too early (December 1914) to witness its astonishing success against Allied commerce in World War I. Mahan‘s views and great prestige contributed to the general prewar underestimation of the submarine, even within the German navy. [See the biography of Mahan.]
Corbett and Castex . Another distinguished though less well-known figure in naval strategy was Mahan‘s civilian British contemporary Julian Corbett, also a naval historian. In France an outstanding figure was Admiral Raoul Castex, who between the wars wrote with insight of the submarine experience of World War I. The very few books on naval strategy published after these writers (e.g., Brodie 1941) were usually attempts to bring the work of these thinkers, especially of Mahan, up to date.
Douhet . In the new field of air strategy there was only one noteworthy writer, the Italian General Giulio Douhet, whose slender body of writings appeared in the decade following World War I. U.S. Brigadier General “Billy” Mitchell was an air propagandist, but except for some commonplace ideas, like applying the notion of concentration of force to the air, he was not truly a thinker on air strategy. The British attach much importance to the views of Lord Trenchard, World War I commander of the Royal Flying Corps and founder of the Royal Air Force, and some of his assistants (e.g., General P. R. C. Groves), whose convictions were more or less parallel to those of Douhet. The leaders of the German Luftwaffe of World War II, as well as of the American air forces, subsequently acknowledged their indebtedness to Douhet.
Douhet (1921) attempted to apply Mahan‘s concept of command of the sea to air fighting. Actually Douhet exaggerated the similarity of air and naval strategies, and he is more easily and accurately remembered as the prophet of the concept that attributes dominance to strategic bombing. In Douhet‘s opinion nothing could withstand the power of a large bomber force, which could and should ignore the static battle lines on the ground and proceed to destroy first the enemy‘s offensive air force, then the factories from which his air power issued, and finally the will to resist of the people at large. Douhet assumed, too readily that ground fighting would always be stalled as it was in 1914-1918, and he grossly underestimated the tonnage of bombs required to accomplish the above-described goals against any significant power. In World War II the RAF and the USAAF attempted to carry out his design, with results that were limited but certainly positive, especially against Japan. [For an evaluation, see Brodie 1959, chapters 3 and 4; see also the biography of Douhet.]
Clausewitz . In land strategy, certainly the oldest area in which any kind of strategic thinking can be discovered, the towering stature of Karl von Clausewitz, who died in 1831, has not been surpassed or even equaled. Clausewitz is almost alone in the philosophic breadth and grasp he had of this subject. Among the publicists in all strategic fields since his time, only Mahan comes close to his sense of the political constraints on strategy. Clausewitz‘ book On War (1832-1834) is ponderous and difficult to read, and it has suffered from bad translations of corrupted texts. It has had few readers, and the frequent references to, or “quotations” from, his work often distort his essential message.
Far from being the advocate of total or absolute war, as is often charged, Clausewitz might in fact be considered the originator of the modern doctrine of limited war. His often-quoted phrase “War is a mere continuation of politics by other means” was intended simply to stress the necessary dominance of the political aim and thus the necessary subjection of the general to the political leader. This has been generally overlooked or forgotten, but another basic Clausewitz thesis which did not suffer this fate was the importance of destroying the enemy‘s armed forces, a process distinct from capturing portions of his territory or cities or fortresses. [See the biography of Clausewitz.]
Jomini . An important contemporary of Clausewitz‘ was the Swiss mercenary Antoine Henri Jomini, a senior officer on Napoleon‘s staff and later on the staff of Napoleon‘s enemy, the tsar of Russia. Jomini‘s continual publications during a very long life, his lucidity, and the fact that he wrote in relatively accessible French rather than forbidding German, resulted in his having, outside of Germany, a far greater influence than Clausewitz. The generals on both sides of the American Civil War are supposed to have been much influenced by him.
He is best summarized as the chief interpreter of Napoleon‘s strategy and of the elements which brought about its success. We may perceive his continuing influence especially in his exaltation of the doctrine of the offensive. Clausewitz had also appreciated the importance of the offensive, but his views were characteristically more moderate and qualified. Jomini is also famous for coining the phrase (though not originating the thought) “methods change but principles are unchanging.” However, he did not deign to present an accompanying list of principles. Such a list was to be the corruption of a later age.
Du Picq and Foch . In France an original mind appeared in the slender but scholarly work of Colonel Ardant du Picq, killed in one of the first battles of the Franco-Prussian War. Du Picq was entirely absorbed with the psychology of the soldier in combat. His realistic insights, because they were not carefully studied, had an unfortunate influence in the pre-World War I school of French military romantics under the intellectual leadership of Ferdinand Foch. Foch and his followers made slogans of quotations from du Picq and Clausewitz without troubling to understand the subleties of their thought. For example, du Picq‘s remark “He will win who has the resolution to advance” referred to the omnipresent element of fear in battle. Foch quoted it as a clarion call to the attack. However outstanding his later abilities as a commander, Foch in his pre-1914 role as professor at the École Supérieure de la Guerre and as a writer on strategy was mostly a propagandist and a vulgarizer of his greater predecessors.
The method of all these men consisted in the scrutiny of military history to see what abiding lessons could be derived from the experience of the past. Some, like Clausewitz, du Picq, and Mahan, had been careful and fairly objective historians; others, like Foch, were not averse to distorting history, with which they had little enough familiarity, to serve their pre-existing convictions. We should also notice that none of these figures, including the most recent, were at all interested in applying quantitative measures to their data or conceptions. Douhet‘s failure to apply even elementary arithmetical calculations to his concepts resulted in the gross exaggerations that oblige us to account him, however insightful, more wrong than right in his prediction of the character of World War II. Perhaps the contemporary strategists contrast most sharply with the old precisely in their different attitude toward quantification.
”Principles of war.” Beginning shortly before World War I and continuing into the present, there have been various presentations of the so-called principles of war (the first listing of principles in United States Army training manuals was in Training Regulations 10-5 of 1921, which simply named the “principles” without explaining them). These “principles,” usually presented in lists of six to a dozen numbered maxims, are supposed to be unchanging despite the fantastic changes that have occurred and continue to occur in almost all the factors with which they deal. The propositions usually stress the importance of such common-sense precepts as: avoid undue dispersion of strength in order to maximize the chances for superiority at the decisive point (principle of mass, or concentration); choose firmly your course of action and adhere to it despite distracting pressures (principle of the objective); press vigorously any advantage gained, especially after victory in battle (principle of pursuit); etc. There are occasional additions to, or subtractions from, this list, depending on the whim or bias of the individual compiler.
The utility of these generalizations or “principles” is in encapsulating what otherwise has to be derived from much study, as well as in placing foremost in the commander‘s mind important ideas that might otherwise be forgotten in the heat of battle. Nevertheless, undue emphasis upon them argues a negation of strategic thinking. When Admiral Halsey declined on the basis of the “principle of concentration” to divide his tremendous force at Leyte Gulf, electing instead to throw the whole of the great Third Fleet against the puny decoy force under Admiral Ozawa, he threw away his chance for destroying the main Japanese fleet. As Winston Churchill put it, “The truths of war are absolute, but the principles governing their application have to be deduced on each occasion from the circumstances, which are always different; and in consequence no rules are any guide to action” (1923-1929, p. 576 in the 1931 edition).
Contemporary strategic thought. Changes wrought by World War II. World War II had an altogether different character from World War I, but among the more conspicuous changes two deserve special mention. The first was the heavy reliance upon scientists to assist not only top military commanders but even heads of government to reach critical tactical and strategic decisions. The role of scientists was particularly prominent in the new field of strategic bombing, where previous war experience was completely lacking and where a flow of new inventions was radically affecting the capabilities of the bombing forces. The outstanding application of analytical skills was in target selection, where economists proved especially invaluable.
The second was the introduction at the very end of the conflict of the atomic bomb, which was in itself a basic strategic change of totally unprecedented importance. It also signaled the beginning of an era of extremely rapid and also extremely costly technological development, which would in turn account for the unparalleled ascendancy of the “superpowers,” the Soviet Union and especially the United States. The atomic bomb differed from all previous military inventions in that it was immediately clear that its effects went far beyond the tactical. The bomber airplane had already taken war beyond the battlefield, but nuclear weapons guaranteed that those operations which in World War II we called strategic bombing would be all-important in any war in which they should again occur. However, shortly one began to hear expressions of the fear that even in their initial form those weapons were far too effective for the user‘s good, as long as reciprocal use also had to be considered.
Furthermore, the rapidity of change that resulted from the development of a wide range of nuclear weapons, combined with the development of fabulous new rockets or “self-propelled missiles” for carrying them, diminished greatly the utility of traditional “military judgment” in selecting the appropriate systems. The professional military man had enough to do to keep abreast of current technological developments pertinent to his work. But decisions about weapons systems had to be made even though these systems might not be ready for six years or more, when the whole technological environment could be significantly different. (A “weapons system” refers to the entire system of utilization, including manning, bases, etc., of any major weapon.)
It was not a wholly new requirement of the military that they think ahead technologically, but certainly the dimensions and complexity of the problem were totally new. Also, apart from technological issues, the fears justly inspired by nuclear weapons, as well as the menacing unknowns posed by the political realignment of world power—accented by the ascendancy of the Soviet Union in Europe, the victory of communism in China, and the decolonization of large parts of Africa, Asia, and the western Pacific—required continuing intensive scrutiny by suitably trained scholars of the changing political constraints on national strategy.
Institutional and intellectual developments . Deriving partly from these realizations on the part of the military, a development took place in the United States that was to have far-reaching consequences for the study of strategy. This was the founding of a number of nonprofit research institutions closely associated with, but autonomous from, the military services, where people with various kinds of scientific training, including the social sciences, and with access to “classified” (i.e., secret) information could devote themselves on a full-time basis to the consideration of national security problems. The prototype of these organizations, and still the best known among them, is The RAND Corporation, originally set up by a contract between the United States Air Force and the Douglas Aircraft Corporation but shortly thereafter made independent from Douglas.
Although it was perhaps not intended by their military sponsors that these research institutions should concern themselves with strategy, it was inevitable that at least some of their personnel would ultimately do so. Able, highly trained men are unlikely to let go unchallenged assumptions which they consider invalid or faulty but which have been fed to them as “givens” or “inputs” for what are supposed to be limited technical inquiries. Furthermore, while in the nuclear age the old division between land, sea, and air strategy makes, from the national point of view, less sense than ever, professional military officers are likely to be affected by loyalty to service interests. At any rate, the new nonprofit research institutions, together with some universities, began to produce from their civilian staffs the new leaders of strategic thought.
Although the larger research efforts conducted by these institutions were likely to be carried on by teams of technical experts, the novel and important ideas that floated into public consciousness were, as always in the past, the product mostly of individuals who seemed to have special gifts for strategic insight. The latter, though certainly more numerous than ever before, are still not a numerous group, yet they have produced most of the ideas on which debate has focused since the end of World War II, some of which have already won overwhelming national and even international acceptance. The more important of these ideas can be divided into two groups, comprising (a) a drastic modification of the previously prevailing notions concerning the conduct of total, or “general,” nuclear war, and (b) development of a new body of views concerning “limited war.”
With respect to the former, the theory of strategic bombing derived from Douhet and the experience of World War II, and initially carried over almost unchanged into the nuclear era, called for the most rapid possible destruction of the enemy‘s retaliatory air power, his war-production industries, and the morale of his people, mostly through the slaughter of a large proportion of them. Security of the offensive force was to be gained not through defensive means but by attacking in good time, and nuclear weapons only made it more urgent to strike first. However, civilian theorists began to point out that because general nuclear wars would have to be fought with “forces-in-being,” which is to say, forces existing at the outset, the so-called war-production industries counted for little or nothing as targets. Furthermore, the slaughter of populations was contraindicated for strategic as well as humanitarian reasons. There was, therefore, a strong trend toward “city-avoidance” strategies, which is to say that in any sensible target system cities were to be hostages rather than ruins, the main emphasis being on “counterforce” or “damage-limiting” targets, that is, the destruction of enemy retaliatory forces in order to limit damage to oneself.
Security of one‘s own offensive or retaliatory forces was to be sought not through rapidity of reaction—obviously dangerous to the maintenance of peace—but, especially with missiles, through underground protection (”hardening”), concealment, or mobility. As both major nuclear powers proceeded to make their retaliatory forces markedly less vulnerable, a real targeting dilemma set in, inasmuch as the resulting deterioration of the utility of counterforce strategies did not in itself warrant a return to the concept of city targeting. At any rate, the changes which produced this dilemma were considered highly stabilizing, because far from being anxious to strike while striking was possible, neither side now had much inducement to initiate the mutually destructive exchange.
The prevailing realization was indeed that there could be no conceivable political objectives worth the fighting of a general nuclear war. As a result ideas of limited war were developed, characterized in the main by the concept of having localized aggressions resisted locally rather than by general war or “massive retaliation” (to use a phrase derived from a much-publicized speech on January 12, 1954, by U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, who was thereby attempting to reject the recently concluded Korean War as a pattern for the future). The modern concept of limited war, it should be noted, is totally different from that of the eighteenth century, inasmuch as it means not a limited mobilization of the total potential force of the state but rather the withholding of a tremendously powerful, already mobilized and in fact highly alerted force.
The earlier theorists of limited war saw no essential reason for avoiding tactical use of nuclear weapons, but later a school of thought developed which placed heavy emphasis on the avoidance of nuclear weapons at almost all costs, primarily because of the allegedly “escalatory” effects of any resort to nuclear weapons. “Escalation” (i.e., a heightening of intensity of hostilities) was something which might be deliberately sought as a warning to the enemy of one‘s resolve, but its obvious dangers made it imperative to keep it tightly controlled. The idea of a deliberate and always measured progression, where necessary, from very limited to very large applications of force fell under the general concept of “controlled response.” This concept, with special emphasis on “conventional,” or nonnuclear, fighting capabilities, characterized the administration of President John F. Kennedy and Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara. [See Limited war; and Nuclear war.]
The intellectual and institutional movement just described has thus far been almost exclusively American, with some imitation, on an extremely modest scale, in the United Kingdom and in France. There seems to be no comparable emphasis on analytical techniques in the communist countries, where the study of strategy still seems to be the exclusive preserve of the military leaders, except insofar as they are guided on particular issues by the intuitively derived dicta of their political leaders.
Recent research directions . The body of the new strategic inquiry may be divided, somewhat arbitrarily, into three major categories: (1) the formulation and intellectual testing of new strategic concepts by a variety of analytical devices (including war gaming); (2) the formulation of national-defense-policy recommendations concerning particular regions; and (3) recommendations on the selection of “weapons systems,” determined largely by what has come to be called “cost-effectiveness” analysis, that is, a rigorous method for finding how to get the most military value for any given sum of money or, conversely, for getting a certain high level of defense potential at minimum cost (see Quade 1964).
These varying efforts, most of them concerned with vast expenditures, have stimulated an appreciation of quantification, which as we have seen, was previously absent from strategic discourse except in mobilization planning. On the other hand, where strategic study used to be based primarily on historical research, most of its new devotees have largely neglected or- abandoned military history. Although this neglect or separation has sometimes been defended by appeals to the novelty of the post-World War II strategic universe, there is no doubt that it represents one of the weaknesses or limitations in the new approach. Perhaps the new emphasis on limited war will stimulate a return to relevant historical research, which after all provides our only secure information on how men behave in political crisis and in battle. Besides, the era since World War II has by now developed an important history of its own, which includes a succession of crises and of various kinds of military conflict, including a considerable conventional war in Korea and a new kind of conflict in Vietnam.
The pace of technological development in military armaments is hardly likely to slacken appreciably in the future. For that reason, the special kinds of cost-effectiveness analysis of military systems developed since World War II will no doubt continue to play a prominent part in strategic decision-making processes. On the other hand, there are at least two reasons for expecting that strategic thought will be much less concerned with technological developments than in the score of years following World War II. First, though new weapons systems will appear, and various existing kinds will become more “sophisticated,” there do seem to be ceilings on meaningful effectiveness. Already nuclear weapons can be made that are much more powerful than seems to be warranted by most conceivable uses; and the possibility, for example, of using orbiting space vehicles for potentially aggressive military purposes (they are already available for reconnaissance) is not likely to make a major change in the military aspect that the great nuclear powers already present to each other. Second, while the primary problem for strategists in the past was to assemble and effectively utilize superior strength, in the contemporary period the more frequent problem is how to make the available power relevant to objectives likely to be in dispute. Certainly it is no longer necessary at this writing to emphasize, to any government that may have the power to conduct it, the fantastic destructiveness of total nuclear war and the unsuitability of that degree of military conflict for any conceivable political objectives.
We may therefore expect, in any strategic analysis, a heightening of the importance of the political environment with respect to the total governance of any military operations. And for that reason we may expect not only the continued dominance of civilian influence in both the analysis and determination of strategic issues but possibly also some lessening of the relative importance of the special nonprofit defense-oriented research organizations described above, for they will not necessarily have a comparative advantage over other intellectual institutions in appraising the political realities of the times.
Bernard Brodie
[See alsoDeterrence; Limited war; Military policy; Military power potential; National security; Nuclear war. Other relevant material may be found underInternational relations; andWar.]
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