Part IV: Classic Strategery
Most people would find military reading to be more boring than Fly Fishing with Glen Blackwood. And sometimes, in the midst of Von Clausewitz perhaps, it can be. But it's one of my keen points of interest, so I'm going to share a bit of what I've learned about the mechanics of waging war. Read this, and you won't have to plough through Hart or Tzu or the rest (not to say that it wouldn't be edificatious). There's three things that poop into my head when I think of basic military strategy. So here we go.
Initiative - the concept of being and staying "one step ahead" of the oppostition. This is the basis of what I've talked about before regarding pre-emptive action. In war, you want to be calling the shots: acting rather than reacting. If you knock your enemy hard from the start, he may never recover his balance. The idea of surprise attacks and unpredictabilty all stem from attempting to recover or maintain the initiative during a campaign. We've all heard about the "Blitzkrieg", made famous by the shocking speed of the German armor during the opening campaigns of the Second World War. The primary advantage of this style of attack was keeping the enemy off-balance and always reacting; that's what we call initiative.
Indirect Approach - this is the key to military history. It involves approaching situations in unconventional and unacticipated ways. When France built the Maginot Line, it expected that an attacker would have to overcome it. But what did the Germans do in 1940? Slammed through the Low Countries via the Ardennes forest and took France from the north (see, the French figured that Germany would respect Belgium's neutrality - bad call). That's a pretty good example. Another one is Hannibal's march across the Alps with his elephants to attack the city of Rome; a miracle of logistics which nearly resulted in the capitulation of the Roman capital. The examples of the success of the indirect versus the failure of the direct in military history are endless. For a full exposition of the indirect approach, read Strategy by B. H. Liddell Hart. In fact, read any book by Hart at all.
Intelligence - now we're going back to the beginning of time. Knowing your enemy predicates all military strategy. Basically, military planning is guessing. The more educated your guessing, the more likely it is your planning will go, well, as you planned. This is a pretty intuitive concept, but we're discussing the ABCs here, so that's ok.
That does not cover all, or even most, of the well-established and ancient rules of military planning. But this post is already way too long. For those of you pining to discuss just war, have no fear! As we say auf Deutsch, "es kommt." In the meantime, stick with me and all will be revealed in time.
Initiative - the concept of being and staying "one step ahead" of the oppostition. This is the basis of what I've talked about before regarding pre-emptive action. In war, you want to be calling the shots: acting rather than reacting. If you knock your enemy hard from the start, he may never recover his balance. The idea of surprise attacks and unpredictabilty all stem from attempting to recover or maintain the initiative during a campaign. We've all heard about the "Blitzkrieg", made famous by the shocking speed of the German armor during the opening campaigns of the Second World War. The primary advantage of this style of attack was keeping the enemy off-balance and always reacting; that's what we call initiative.
Indirect Approach - this is the key to military history. It involves approaching situations in unconventional and unacticipated ways. When France built the Maginot Line, it expected that an attacker would have to overcome it. But what did the Germans do in 1940? Slammed through the Low Countries via the Ardennes forest and took France from the north (see, the French figured that Germany would respect Belgium's neutrality - bad call). That's a pretty good example. Another one is Hannibal's march across the Alps with his elephants to attack the city of Rome; a miracle of logistics which nearly resulted in the capitulation of the Roman capital. The examples of the success of the indirect versus the failure of the direct in military history are endless. For a full exposition of the indirect approach, read Strategy by B. H. Liddell Hart. In fact, read any book by Hart at all.
Intelligence - now we're going back to the beginning of time. Knowing your enemy predicates all military strategy. Basically, military planning is guessing. The more educated your guessing, the more likely it is your planning will go, well, as you planned. This is a pretty intuitive concept, but we're discussing the ABCs here, so that's ok.
That does not cover all, or even most, of the well-established and ancient rules of military planning. But this post is already way too long. For those of you pining to discuss just war, have no fear! As we say auf Deutsch, "es kommt." In the meantime, stick with me and all will be revealed in time.
