War, conflict and Security.

When I have learnt what progress has been made in modern gunnery,

When I know more of tactics than a novice in a nunnery—

In short, when I’ve a smattering of elemental strategy

You’ll say a better Major-General has never sat a-gee.

For my military knowledge, though I’m plucky and adventury,

Has only been brought down to the beginning of the century.

—Gilbert and Sullivan, The Pirates of Penzance

In the famous patter song from their light opera of 1879, Gilbert and Sullivan have their “modern major general” parading his knowledge of all things historical, classical, artistic, and scientifi c. Only at the end does he admit that the gaps in his knowledge are those exactly relevant to his trade. When he admits that his military knowledge has yet to reach the start of the nineteenth century, he is saying that it is pre-Napoleonic, therefore belong- ing to a quite different age and unfi t for contemporary purposes.

Martin van Creveld has asked whether strategy existed before 1800. 1 From the perspective of this book, of course, it existed from the moment primates formed social groupings. Van Creveld accepted that there were always some informed notions of the conduct of war and how to achieve victory. Commanders had to work out their approach to battle and organize

The New Science of Strategy chapter 6

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their forces accordingly. What van Creveld had in mind was a step change that occurred around this time. Before 1800, intelligence-gathering and communication systems were slow and unreliable. For that reason, generals had to be on the front line—or at least not too far behind—in order to adjust quickly to the changing fortunes of battle. They dared not develop plans of any complexity. Adopting measures such as splitting forces in order to attack the enemy from different directions or holding back reserves to reinforce success was likely to lead to command and logistical nightmares. Roads were poor and movement was bound to be slow. Although it was no longer neces- sary to live off the land, logistical support required that magazines be moved along supply lines. This entailed a serious vulnerability if the enemy man- aged to cut the lines. Modest maneuvers or nighttime marches were the best options for catching an enemy by surprise. Armies that lacked passion and commitment, whose soldiers were easily tempted to desert if food was in short supply or conditions too harsh, did not encourage confi dence in sustain- able campaigns. Prudence suggested concentrating on pushing enemies into positions where they would feel vulnerable or struggle to stay supplied. All this limited the impact of wars on the apparently stable European balance of power. Then, as transport systems were improving and lands were becoming properly mapped, along came Napoleon Bonaparte, self-proclaimed emperor of France. Napoleon embodied a new way of fi ghting wars: a combination of individual genius and mass organization, and objectives far more ambitious than those of his predecessors.

The French Revolution of 1789 was a source of great energy, innovation, and destruction. It unleashed political and social forces that could not be contained in their time and whose repercussions continued to be felt in the succeeding centuries. In military affairs, the Revolution led to large, popular armies whose impact was enhanced by the developing means of transport- ing them over long distances. There was a move away from limited wars of position, bound up with quarrels between individual rulers and shaped by logistical constraints and unreliable armies, to total wars engaging whole nations. 2 With Napoleon, wars became means by which one state could chal- lenge the very existence of another. No longer were they an elaborate form of bargaining. The high stakes removed incentives to compromise and encour- aged a fi ght to a bloody conclusion. Military maneuvers were no longer ritu- alistic—their impact reinforced by the occasional battle—but preludes to great confrontations that could see whole armies effectively eliminated and states subjugated.

This section opens with the introduction of the modern concept of strat- egy and then describes the views of its two key exponents, Baron Henri de

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Jomini and Carl von Clausewitz. They developed their ideas at a time of great political turbulence, a time when individual battles redrew the maps of Europe and new challenges were thrown up by the need to mobilize, moti- vate, move, and direct mass armies. The focus was on battle and the possibil- ity of infl icting such a defeat that the enemy would be left in a politically hopeless position. This was when the idea of the battle of annihilation was fi rmly implanted in military minds. Lost in this process was a view of battle as the “chance of arms” which until then had been accepted by the belliger- ents as an appropriate form of dispute resolution.

This view survived well into the nineteenth century, and arguably only collapsed in that century’s second half. It was, however, always tenuous and its days were numbered. It was the product of a monarchical system in which the causes and outcomes of war were bound up with matters of most interest to rulers, such as dynastic succession or sovereignty over particular pieces of ter- ritory, and so it was vulnerable to the rise of nationalism and republicanism. It was part of a normative framework that was always subject to interpretation at its edges. In the most restrained version, victory was the agreed outcome of a day’s fi ghting, which would leave one army triumphant on the fi eld of battle, looking for booty and stripping enemy corpses. It still depended on the enemy accepting the result. Certain victories appeared to have more legitimacy than others, for example, those achieved without recourse to gross deceptions. But the notionally defeated sovereign could challenge his predicament by observ- ing that while retreat might have been necessary, the other side took more casualties; or the retreat was in suffi ciently good order so another battle could be fought. The victor had to calculate whether suffi cient damage had been done to convince the enemy to now negotiate sensibly. This depended in part on what was at stake, as well as on whether the enemy had any capacity to fi ght back or else might be coerced through sieges and rampages through the countryside, which he was helpless to prevent.

Even a badly bruised opponent might fi nd a way to continue resistance, regroup, or acquire an external ally. Given the uncertainties and explosive tendencies connected with war, was it wise to assume that this was no more than a form of violent diplomacy? If it was bound to end with a compromise, why not settle the matter with diplomacy before blood was shed, or look for alternative—possibly economic—forms of coercion? Forming alliances and undermining those of the enemy—evidently a matter of statecraft—could be of as much or even greater importance to a war’s outcome than a display of brilliant generalship.

The starting point for nineteenth-century strategic discourse, however, was the expectation of a decisive battle, from which exceptions might be

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found, rather than the demands of statecraft, for which battle might be the exception. Military circles encouraged the characterization of the interna- tional system as extensions of the battlefi eld, as constant struggles for sur- vival and domination.

Strategy as Profession and Product

If we consider strategy to be a particular sort of practical problem-solving, it has existed since the start of time. Even if the word was not always in use, we can now look back and observe how personalities engaged in activities that would later be called strategy. Did the arrival of a word to capture this activity make an important difference to the actual practice? Even after its introduc- tion, strategy was not universally employed as a descriptor even by those who might now be considered accomplished strategists. What was different was the idea of strategy as a general body of knowledge from which leaders could draw. The strategist came to be a distinctive professional offering special- ist advice to elites, and strategy became a distinctive product refl ecting the complexity of situations in which states and organizations found themselves.

We noted earlier the role of the stratēgos in 5th-century Athens. According to Edward Luttwak, the ancient Greek and Byzantine equivalent to our strat- egy would have been stratēgike episteme (generals’ knowledge) or stratēgōn sophia (generals’ wisdom). 3 This knowledge took the form of compilations of strata- gems, as in the Strategematon , the Greek title of the Latin work by Frontinus. The Greeks would have described what was known about the conduct of war as taktike techne , which included what we call tactics as well as rhetoric and diplomacy.

The word strategy only came into general use at the start of the nineteenth century. Its origins predated Napoleon and refl ected the Enlightenment’s growing confi dence in empirical science and the application of reason. Even war, the most unruly of human activities, might be studied and conducted in the same spirit. This fi eld of study at fi rst was known as tactics , a word that had for some time referred to the orderly organization and maneuver of troops. Tactics defi ned as “the science of military movements” could, accord- ing to Beatrice Heuser, be traced back to the fourth century BCE. There was no corresponding defi nition of strategy until an anonymous sixth-century work linked it explicitly with the general’s art. “Strategy is the means by which a commander may defend his own lands and defeat his enemies.” In 900, the Byzantine emperor Leo VI wrote of strategía to provide an overall term for the business of the strategos. A few centuries later there was some

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knowledge of Leo’s work, but when in 1554 a Cambridge professor translated the text into Latin, which lacks a word for strategy, he used “the art of the general” or “the art of command.” 4

In 1770, Jacques Antoine Hippolyte, Comte de Guibert, published his Essai général de tactique . Then only 27, Guibert was a precocious and extrava- gant French intellectual who had already acquired extensive military experi- ence. He produced a systematic treatise on military science that captured the spirit of the Enlightenment and gained enormous infl uence. At issue was whether it was possible to overcome the indecisiveness of contemporary war. Guibert’s view was that achieving a decisive result with a mass army required an ability to maneuver. He distinguished “elementary tactics,” which became “tactics,” from “grand tactics,” which became “strategy.” Guibert wanted a unifi ed theory, raising tactics to “the science of all times, all places and all arms.” His key distinction was between raising and training armies, and then using them in war. 5 By 1779, he was writing of “la stratégique.” 6

The sudden introduction of the word is attributed by Heuser to Paul Gédéon Joly de Maizeroy’s translation of Leo’s book into French in 1771. Joly de Maizeroy identifi ed Leo’s “science of the general” as being separate from the subordinate spheres of tactics. In a footnote, he observed: “ La stra- tégique is thus properly said to be the art of the commander, to wield and employ appropriately and with adroitness all the means of the general in his hand, to move all the parts that are subordinate to him, and to apply them successfully.” By 1777, a German translation of the work used the term Strategie . Joly de Maizeroy described strategy as “sublime” (a word also used by Guibert) and involving reason more than rules. There was much to con- sider: “In order to formulate plans, strategy studies the relationships between time, positions, means and different interests, and takes every factor into account . . . which is the province of dialectics, that is to say, of reasoning, which is the highest faculty of the mind.” 7 The term now began to achieve a wide currency, offering a way of inserting deliberate, calculating thought into an arena previously remarkable for its absence.

In Britain from the start of the nineteenth century, a plethora of words emerged:  strategematic, strategematical, strategematist, strategemical. All sought to convey the idea of being versed in strategies and stratagems. Thus, a strat- egemitor would devise stratagems, while a stratarchy referred to the system of rule in an army, starting with the top commander. This word was once used by British prime minister William Gladstone to refer to how armies would go beyond hierarchy to require absolute obedience to superior offi - cers. Then there was stratarithmetry, which was a way of estimating how many men you had by drawing up an army or body of men into a given

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geometrical fi gure. An alternative word for strategist was strategian, which goes neatly with tactician—though this did not catch on.

The distinction between strategy and tactics was of acknowledged impor- tance as a means of distinguishing between different levels of command and contact with the enemy. Thus strategy was the art of the commander-in-chief “projecting and directing the larger military movements and operations of a campaign,” while tactics was “the art of handling forces in battle or in the immediate presence of the enemy.” 8 Soon the word migrated away from its military context and into such diverse areas as trade, politics, and theology.

The speed with which the word strategy gained currency meant that it came to be used without a generally agreed upon defi nition. There was a consensus that strategy had something to do with the supreme commander and that it was about linking military means to the objects of war. It involved making connections between all that was going on in the military sphere beyond the more intimate and small-scale maneuvers and encounters handled at the lower levels of command. But the activities that came under the head- ing of strategy were also understood to be intensely practical, a consequence of the sheer size of the armies of the new age, the extraordinary demands posed by their movement and provisioning, and the factors that would gov- ern how enemies should be approached. Much of this might be subject to forms of practical knowledge and principles that could be described in a systematic and instructive way, with checklists of considerations to be taken into account by the more forward-looking commanders. It is not surprising therefore that strategy became closely associated with planning. Questions of supply and transport limited what could be achieved, and calculations of fi repower and fortifi cation infl uenced decisions on the deployment of troops. Put this way, strategy covered all those aspects of a military campaign that might properly be determined in advance.

Improved maps made an enormous difference to planning of this sort. Developments in cartography meant that it was possible to consider how a campaign might develop by plotting its likely course on sheets of paper, representing base camps and lines of supply, enemy positions, and oppor- tunities for maneuvers. A  start had been made on the reconceptualization of war in spatial terms by a Henry Lloyd, who had left Britain because of his participation in the Jacobite rebellion of 1745 and then fought with a variety of European armies. Having observed that those who embraced the profession of arms took “little or no pains to study it,” he claimed to have identifi ed fi xed principles of war that could vary only in their application. 9 Lloyd is credited with inventing the term line of operations , which remains in use to this day and describes an army’s path from its starting point to its

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fi nal destination. Lloyd infl uenced subsequent military theorists, including the Prussian Heinrich Dietrich von Bulow, who went to France in 1790 to experience the Revolution fi rst hand. Having studied Napoleon’s methods, he wrote on military affairs, including a Practical Guide to Strategy in 1805. He got somewhat carried away by the possibilities of geometric representa- tions of armies preparing for battle. His reliance on mathematical principles led to him to offer proofs on how armies might constitute themselves and move forward, according to distances from their starting base and enemy objective. The approach can be discerned from his defi nition of strategy as “all enemy movements out of the enemy’s cannon range or range of vision,” so that tactics covered what happened within that range. 10 His observations on tactics were considered to have merit, but much to his chagrin his descrip- tion of the “new war system” was ignored by Prussian generals.

Whatever the scientifi c method might bring to the battlefi eld, when it came to deciding on the moment, form, and conduct of battle, much would depend on the general’s own judgment—perhaps more a matter of character, insight, and intuition than careful calculation and planning. When battle was joined, the theory could say little because of the many variables in play. At that point, war became an art form. Strategy could be considered a matter of science, in the sense of being systematic, empirically based, and logically developed, covering all those things that could be planned in advance and were subject to calculation. As art, strategy covered actions taken by bold generals who could achieve extraordinary results in unpromising situations.

Napoleon’s Strategy

Napoleon preferred to keep the critical ingredients behind his approach beyond explanation. The art of war, he insisted, was simple and commonsen- sical. It was “all in execution . . . nothing about it is theoretical.” The essence of the art was simple: “With a numerically inferior army” it was necessary to have “larger forces than the enemy at the point which is to be attacked or defended.” How best to achieve that was an art that could “be learned neither from books nor from practice.” This was matter for the military genius and therefore for intuition. Napoleon’s contribution to strategy was not so much in his theory but in his practice. Nobody could think of better ways of using great armies to win great wars.

Napoleon was not creating new forms of warfare completely from scratch. He was building on the achievements of Frederick the Great, the most admired commander of his time. Frederick was king of Prussia from 1740 to 1786 and

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a refl ective and prolifi c writer on war. His success was the result of turning his army into a responsive instrument, well trained and held together by tough discipline. Initially he preferred his wars to be “short and lively,” which required accepting battle. Long wars exhausted a state’s resources as well as its soldiers, and Frederick’s country was relatively poor. His seizure of Silesia early in his reign, during the War of Austrian Succession, made his reputation as a tactical genius. Whitman uses this campaign as a prime example of how a “law of vic- tory” could ensure restraint, so long as both sides accepted battle as a form of wager. Frederick observed that battles “decide the fortune of states” and could “put an end to a dispute that otherwise might never be settled.” As kings were subject to “no superior tribunal,” combat could “decide their rights” and “judge the validity of their reasons.” 11

Over time, however, Frederick became more wary of battle due to its dependence upon chance. Success might need to come through the accumula- tion of small gains rather than a single decisive encounter. Unlike Napoleon, Frederick preferred to avoid fi ghting too far from his own borders, did not expect to destroy the opposing army in battle, and avoided frontal attacks. His signature tactic was the “oblique order,” an often complex maneuver requiring a disciplined force. It involved concentrating forces against the enemy’s strongest fl ank while avoiding engagement on his own weak fl ank. If the enemy did not succumb, an orderly retreat would still be possible; if the enemy fl ank was overrun, the next step was to wheel round and roll up his line. What Frederick shared with Napoleon—and what later theorists celebrated in both—was the ability to create strength on the battlefi eld, even without an overall numerical advantage, and direct it against an enemy’s vulnerabilities.

As a young offi cer, Napoleon also read Guibert and took from him some basic ideas which he made his own. In particular, he noted the need to launch attacks at the key points where superiority had been achieved, and to reach these points by moving quickly. Although Guibert had observed that “hege- mony over Europe will fall to that nation which . . . becomes possessed of manly virtues and creates a national army,” he had not seen conscription as the means to this end. He assumed the duties of a citizen and a soldier to be opposed. At most, a militia might be raised as a defensive force. The actual creation of the mass army can be credited to Lazar Carnot, a key fi gure in the French Revolution, who had an uneasy relationship with Napoleon but served him until 1815. It was Carnot who as minister of war used conscrip- tion to create the levée en masse and turned it into a formidable, trained, and disciplined organization. Carnot also showed how a mass army could be used as an offensive instrument by separating it into independent units that could

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move faster than the enemy, enabling attacks against the fl anks and creat- ing opportunities to cut off communications. Most of Napoleon’s generals learned their trade under Carnot.

Napoleon’s contribution was to grasp how the potential of the mass army could be realized. He imbibed the military wisdom of the Enlightenment and took advantage of the system created by Carnot in such a way as to upset not only traditional thinking about war but also the whole European bal- ance of power. His genius lay not in the originality or novelty of his ideas on strategy but in their interpretation in context and the boldness of his execution. His focus was always on the decisive battle. He was prepared to embrace the inherent brutality of war and sought to generate suffi cient con- centrated violence to shatter the opposing army. This was the route to the political goal. An enemy with a broken army would be unwilling to resist political demands. As this required a comprehensive defeat, Napoleon had little interest in indirect strategies. When a point of weakness was found, extra forces would be poured in to break through. They could then move against the enemy from the rear or to the fl anks. This required taking risks, for example, accepting vulnerabilities to his own rear and fl anks as he con- centrated strength. But Napoleon was not reckless. He would wait until the right moment to make his move. Since he put a priority on ensuring that he had the maximum strength, his great battles were often fought in obscure places where he saw an opportunity to strike with guaranteed superiority and utter ruthlessness. By combining political and military authority in one person, Napoleon was also in a position to act boldly without extensive con- sultations. His optimism, self-confi dence, and extraordinary run of victories earned him the loyalty of his troops and kept his enemies apprehensive. This created a sense of irresistibility which he was always keen to exploit.

Napoleon never provided a complete account of his approach to war. He did not write of strategy, although he did refer to the “higher parts of war.” His views were recorded in a number of maxims. They were often practi- cal refl ections on the standard military problems of his day and lack the universal quality of Sun Tzu’s writings. Yet they capture the essence of his approach: bringing superior strength to bear at crucial moments (“God is on the side of the heaviest battalions”); defeating the enemy by destroying his army; viewing strategy as “the art of making use of time and space”; using time to gain strength when weaker; and compensating for physical inferior- ity with greater resolve, fortitude, and perseverance (“The moral is to the physical as three to one”). Many of his maxims revolved around the need to understand the enemy: by fi ghting too often with one enemy, “you will teach him all your art of war”; never do what the enemy wishes “for this reason

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alone, that he desires it”; never interrupt an enemy making a mistake; always show confi dence, for you can see your own troubles but you cannot see those facing your enemy. 12

Borodino

We now turn to a battle which was neither an exemplary success nor a nota- ble defeat but acquired importance because it raised doubts about Napoleon’s method. The battle of Borodino, some eighty miles from Moscow, was fate- ful in its consequences. Fought between the French and Russian armies on September 7, 1812, it involved some quarter of a million men. Of these, about seventy-fi ve thousand were killed, wounded, or captured. Although the French came out on top, the Russians did not consider themselves beaten. Moscow was occupied following Borodino, but the Russians refused to agree to peace terms and Napoleon found that he lacked the capacity to sustain his army for any length of time. After fi ve weeks, he began the famous and harsh retreat from Moscow.

It was not that Napoleon lacked a strategy when he began the campaign in the summer of 1812. He expected to follow his past practice of keeping the enemy guessing, fi nding a point to concentrate overwhelming superior- ity, and then attacking. Once Russian forces were destroyed, he could dic- tate peace terms to Tsar Alexander. To keep the war short and avoid being sucked into the Russian heartland, he wanted to fi ght his battle in the fron- tier regions. He was confi dent against Russian armies, since he boasted such stunning victories as Austerlitz in 1805. Russian leadership had generally been abysmal, and Napoleon assumed that the spineless aristocracy would oblige the Tsar to concede once French superiority had been made clear.

Tsar Alexander had a far better, although politically controversial, strategy. It drew on Russia’s excellent intelligence network in France. Alexander knew from 1810 that a war was almost inevitable. This gave him time to think about a response and to make preparations, taking a candid view of Russia’s weakness, including a lack of reliable allies. One option was to fi ght at the fi rst opportunity before the French could advance far on sacred Russian soil, relying on the superior spirit of Russian troops and what might be achieved by catching the French by surprise. But Alexander knew the numbers were against him and saw the danger in pitting his main armies, without reserves, against a well-supplied and fully formed French army. A defeat would leave the country unprotected. This led him into a defensive strategy, although this meant giving up on an alliance. Austria and Prussia were reluctant to

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join an anti-French coalition involving a Russia that planned to retreat, but Alexander doubted that he could rely on them even if he embarked on an offensive strategy. Most importantly, he understood that Napoleon wanted battle. If that was what he wanted, that was exactly what he should not have.

The Russian plan therefore was to fall back, to the chagrin of many senior offi cers whose instincts were offensive. By trading space for time, they would gain strength. As the French advanced away from their supply lines, the Russians would get closer to theirs. Since Napoleon’s system depended on big battles and rapid victories, the Russians would retreat, raid enemy commu- nications with their much superior light cavalry, and wear down Napoleon’s forces. “We must avoid big battles until we have fallen right back to our supply lines.” 13

The Russians knew what they needed to do, but they had no actual plan of retreat. That depended on when and how Napoleon made his fi rst move. When it came, the retreat had a degree of improvisation, but it was managed better than Napoleon’s advance. The emperor was prepared for an early battle but not for a long advance into unforgiving terrain in the face of inclement weather. As Napoleon chased the Russians in search of a battle, he exhausted his men and particularly his horses. Only as he got close to Moscow could he be confi dent that he would at last get his battle. Despite his tired and depleted force, Napoleon stuck with his original plan on the assumption that the Russians would not give up Moscow without a fi ght.

Facing him in charge of the Russian forces was General Mikhail Kutuzov, a shrewd offi cer with a good understanding of the attitudes of ordinary sol- diers and the Russian people, as well as considerable experience in war. But Kutuzov was now 65, physically and mentally slower than before, and sur- rounded by fl atterers. When the battle came, his deployments and command arrangements were haphazard: he delegated his powers of command to sub- ordinate generals to act as they saw fi t in the circumstances. His passivity left the impression that he had no idea what was going on or what to do next.

Yet the revelation at Borodino was how much Napoleon was off form and off maxim. The advance into Russia had been unexpectedly challenging and costly in men and materiel. By the time of the battle, the Grand Armée had already lost a third of its original 450,000 men—without a proper fi ght. Although much is made of the terrible impact of the Russian winter on the retreat from Moscow, the initial and critical damage was done by the Russian summer. The Russians enjoyed a notional numerical advantage at the time of the battle, although this evaporated when some 31,000 Russian militiamen without much by way of weapons or training were subtracted, leaving around 130,000 French facing 125,000 Russians. 14 The emperor himself had put

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on fat, having enjoyed the good life to excess, and had lost the energy of his earlier years. On the day of the battle he was also unwell, suffering from fever and a painful inability to urinate. He barely seemed in charge.

Napoleon’s subordinate generals conducted the battle almost indepen- dently of each other and without the cohesion he would once have imposed. Instead of his forces being committed against one particular line of attack, there were a series of uncoordinated probes against the Russian positions. Although his superior fi repower blasted holes in the Russian defenses, the enemy fought doggedly and did not surrender—much to Napoleon’s con- sternation. When breakthroughs were possible he dithered, bothered by practicalities when bold maneuvers were proposed to him. With little left of his army to spare at a critical moment, he held back the Imperial Guard out of concern that he would have little left for his next battle.

In past battles he had been an evident presence, riding around to make his own assessments of the situation at the front and to enthuse his troops. On this day, he was absent. A French offi cer observing the emperor’s indeci- sion in the face of contradictory reports about Russian strength, described Napoleon’s “suffering and dejected face, his features sunk, and a dull look; giving his orders languishingly, in the midst of these dreadful warlike noises, to which he seemed completely a stranger.” Mikaberidze adds that Napoleon was “unrecognizable and his lethargy may have been the most decisive factor in the battle, as he rejected proposals that could have delivered victory.” 15

The emperor took comfort in the fact that at the end of the day he occu- pied the battlefi eld and had infl icted greater harm on the enemy than his own forces had suffered. But the Russian army was not annihilated, and those that were not killed or wounded largely escaped. Napoleon had expected to take many prisoners, but the actual haul was small. He now lacked the capacity to fi nish the Russians off in another battle. A large country with a large popula- tion could absorb the losses.

Kutuzov managed to withdraw his forces in an orderly fashion. His one important, absolutely critical, decision was to encourage Napoleon to enter Moscow instead of chasing his army in order to infl ict what might have been a decisive defeat. This had not been his original intent. Prior to Borodino, he had resisted the idea that Moscow was just another town that might have to be sacrifi ced for the greater good of saving the Russian empire. Now Kutuzov acknowledged that he could not save both Moscow and the army and that if the army was lost, then Moscow would go anyway. “Napoleon,” he observed, “is like a torrent which we are still too weak to stem. Moscow is the sponge which will suck him in.” Napoleon allowed himself to be sucked in. As the city was being occupied, fi res began and ultimately destroyed two-thirds of it.

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Napoleon expected the Tsar to sue for peace. Soon he realized that with the Russians unwilling to either fi ght another battle or negotiate a settlement, he was stranded, unable to sustain his forces through hunger and cold. He had no choice but to return to France. The journey home was bitter and crip- pling. When the Russians eventually advanced, the Tsar was able to realize the ultimate goal of his own strategy, which was to revive the anti-Napoleon coalition in Europe.

After this debacle and a fi rst exile, Napoleon made one further attempt at glory, which came to grief at Waterloo in 1815. This master of war had been defeated and those writing the textbooks were left to ponder not only the sources of his original success but the causes of his ultimate failure. For present during the Russian campaign, though playing minor roles, were the two greatest nineteenth-century theorists of war: Carl von Clausewitz and Baron Antoine Henri de Jomini.

[W] ar is not an exercise of the will directed at inanimate matter, as

is the case with the mechanical arts, or at matter which is animate but

passive and yielding, as is the case with the human mind and emotions in

the fi ne arts. In war, the will is directed at an animate object that reacts.

—Clausewitz,  On War

Carl von Clausewitz, born 1780, learned his military craft in the Prussian army as it failed to resist Napoleon’s mass army. Dismayed at Prussia’s craven subordination to victorious France, Clausewitz joined the Russian army (hence his appearance at Borodino) before returning to the Prussian army for the campaign that culminated at Waterloo and the fi nal defeat of Bonaparte. Along with the bulk of the European offi cer class, he had been mesmerized by Napoleon. In 1812, he saw at close quarters the great man’s fallibility: his loss of the killer instinct at the critical moment, the lim- its to his genius. Clausewitz wrote a full account of the campaign, though his own role—and his account—was hampered by his lack of Russian. He did help organize the Convention of Tauroggen, whereby the Prussian contingent that had been obliged to march with Napoleon came to the Russian side.

Clausewitz did not think Borodino a classic of strategy. In the whole bat- tle he found “not a single trace of an art or superior intelligence,” the result coming “less from a carefully considered decision than from indecision and

Clausewitz chapter 7

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circumstance.” His initial, and not unreasonable, conclusion was that the “vastness” of Russia made it impossible “to cover and occupy strategically.” A “large country of European civilization” could not “be conquered without the help of internal discord.” 1 Later he was harsher on Napoleon for not chas- ing the Russian army and described Borodino as a battle that was “never completely fought out.” 2 Both judgments had important implications: the fi rst that the degree of popular support for the state made a difference when dealing with external threats; the second that a victory that did not leave the enemy fatally wounded was of limited value.

Clausewitz’s military reputation in Prussia was modest, and when he was sent to direct the war school it was in an administrative capacity. He did not teach, but he did have the time to collect his thoughts about this remarkable and transformational period of warfare and pull them together for a master- work, On War .

War’s tendency toward the absolute both thrilled and appalled the younger Clausewitz. The more mature Clausewitz appreciated the reasons why wars in practice still fell short of the absolute and that, post-Napoleon just as pre-Napoleon, they might be fought for more modest ends than the survival of states. It was this that led to his determination to engage in a major revision of his whole text, a project that was only partly completed when he died. According to one interpretation, this moment of truth came upon Clausewitz gradually; by another view, 1827 was more of a crisis as he realized that his theory of war failed to account suffi ciently for the various forms in which it had actually occurred. 3 He was still in the process of revis- ing On War when he was struck down by cholera in 1832. His widow did the best she could with the book’s posthumous publication, but the fi nal version inevitably left commentators guessing about what might have been found had he lived to complete the work to his satisfaction.

Jomini

While Clausewitz was seeking to advise the Russians in 1812, Jomini was on the French side. In the retreat from Moscow, he lost his papers at a river crossing as the remnants of the French army were harassed by Russian par- tisans. Although Clausewitz is now considered to be the greater of the two and Jomini is rarely read, it was Jomini who for most of the nineteenth cen- tury was taken to be the foremost interpreter of the Napoleonic method. Napoleon was said to have remarked that Jomini betrayed the innermost secrets of his strategy. Jomini certainly claimed, based on his observations of

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the master, to have discerned basic principles of warfare. This earned him the “dubious title of founder of modern strategy.” 4

Jomini was born in Switzerland in 1779. Though he started work as a banker in Paris, he joined the French army in 1797 and came under the patronage of then General and eventually Marshal Michel Ney. Jomini wrote a treatise on the campaigns of Frederick the Great in 1803. This work con- tained those core beliefs which sustained him until his death in 1869 at the age of 90. He held staff positions for both Napoleon and Ney, but was a diffi - cult egotist and a serial resigner. By 1813 he had risen to become Ney’s chief of staff, but after he was denied promotion to general de division he offered his services to Russia, where he became a full general. His core ideas were published in his Art of War (always a popular title), which was fi rst published in 1830 and then in a revised form in 1838. 5 His book has been described as “the greatest military textbook of the nineteenth century.” 6 By elucidat- ing the enduring principles of strategy, Jomini sought to “make instruction easier, operational judgment sounder, and mistakes less frequent.” The Art of War was published widely. This meant that opposing armies might well have been following the same precepts, and so the advice would become self-neu- tralizing, unless one side dared to seek advantage by breaking Jomini’s rules.

To Jomini, strategy was the sphere of activity between the political, where decisions were made about who to fi ght, and the tactical, which was the sphere of actual combat. By saying that strategy was the art of making war upon the map, he was interested in how the theater of operations as a whole was conceived by the commander and the moves against the enemy formulated, while taking advantage of the spatial awareness made possible by modern cartography. “Strategy decides where to act; logistics brings the troops to this point; grand tactics decides the manner of execution and the employment of the troops.” 7

Politics and tactics were governed by different principles, and Jomini had surprisingly little to say about either. According to John Shy, the only aspect of war that “truly interested him concerned the supreme commander, the Frederick or Napoleon who played the great bloody game, who by sheer intellect and will dominated the men who served him and used them to defeat his enemies.” Jomini’s armies appeared as “faceless masses, armed and fed in mysterious ways.” Their commanders would show their greatness by massing force against weaker enemy forces at some decisive point. 8 Both Frederick the Great and Napoleon had demonstrated the importance of fol- lowing this core principle, though it was by no means straightforward in application. Focusing on one point to the exclusion of others, and leaving your own fl anks vulnerable, required a degree of boldness and an ability to

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weigh risks. Ways had to be found to mass the army for the attack and to identify the main point against which to direct the attack.

Jomini failed to test the historical cases which did not conform to his pre- cepts. He also assumed that military units of equivalent size were essentially equal in how they were armed, trained, disciplined, supplied, and motivated. Strategy was therefore important because only the quality of the commanders and their decisions really made a difference. This was why he could conceive of it as following timeless principles, which required him to assert during his long life that major material shifts, such as the use of railways, were matters of detail. If the principles really were timeless, why was Napoleon such a rev- elation? Jomini’s answer was that the growing maturity in military thought meant that the principles were properly appreciated. 9 He was not the last to use this argument.

Before Jomini went out of fashion during the twentieth century he was the fi rst port of call for any aspiring strategist and a model of lucidity and intelligibility. Jomini might not always have been a scintillating read, but he was much easier to follow than Clausewitz.

The relationship between the two was complex. The younger Clausewitz clearly borrowed from Jomini, and the second edition of the Art of War took into account Clausewitz’s criticisms. 10 The two men never met and did not speak warmly of each other. On many operational issues, the differences were not great. Jomini claimed to be aware of the dangers of theoretical pedantry, while Clausewitz grasped the importance of operational tech- niques. Jomini’s prime purpose was instruction and he found Clausewitz’s theorizing overblown. As Clausewitz developed his ideas, he differentiated himself from von Bulow’s mathematical approach, but his criticisms might also be taken to apply to Jomini. He observed that efforts to “equip the conduct of war with principles, rules, or even systems” failed because they could not “take an adequate account of the endless complexities involved.” “Pity the soldier,” wrote Clausewitz, “who is supposed to crawl among these scraps of rules, not good enough for genius, which genius can ignore, or laugh at. No; what genius does is the best rule, and theory can do no bet- ter than show how and why this should be the case.” 11 Clausewitz came to be celebrated as a greater theorist of war, but Jomini had enduring appeal to military planners. Because he developed his theories while Napoleon was at his peak, Jomini’s writing showed an optimism that is lacking in Clausewitz. Hew Strachan notes how Jomini’s confi dence in his principles, his “rational and managerial,” “prospective and purposeful” theory of war and self-contained view of battle appealed to generations of American generals and admirals. 12

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Clausewitz’s Strategy

In On War , Clausewitz was attempting something very ambitious. More than a textbook for an aspiring general, this was a whole theory of war. His achievement was to develop a conceptual framework that captured war’s essence suffi ciently for subsequent generations to return to it when seeking to make sense of the confl icts of their own time. The ambiguities and tensions in On War allowed Marxists, Nazis, and liberals to claim it as authoritative support for their own theories and strategies. 13 Even those who considered On War wrongheaded and out of date entered into direct competition, as if their own credibility depended on undermining Clausewitz. 14 Contributing to the advanced scholarship on Clausewitz now requires discussing the adequacy of the available translations, the interaction of biography and intellectual development, what might be read into occasional phrases that are suggestive of larger thoughts, and the dual meanings carried by key concepts and their application in particular cases. 15

With this in mind, we can explore the theory of strategy that emerged from Clausewitz’s theory of war. Clausewitz’s most famous dictum, that war is a continuation of policy by other means, is a charter for strategists. The choice of the word policy in the translation by Michael Howard and Peter Paret refl ected their view that the reference needed to be something above everyday “politics,” a word which they saw as having negative connotations in Britain and the United States. Bassford has argued that policy sounds too settled, unilateral, and rational, while politics has the virtue of conveying interactivity, binding rivals together in their confl ict. 16 Both meanings can be made to work. The key point is that insisting on political purpose takes war away from mindless violence. This dictum does not propose that war is always a sensible expression of policy, or that the movement from politics to war is from one defi ned state to another. The difference lies in the violence and the sharpness of the confrontation between two opposed wills. This in turn exacerbates the infl uence of those factors of emotion and chance that are evident in the political sphere but become so much more signifi cant in the military, and constantly complicate war’s conduct. So while Clausewitz by no means rules out an effective strategy, for this would render On War a pointless exercise, his stress was on the limits to strategy, the constraints that make it unwise to try to be too clever.

The challenge for politics, and therefore strategy, was to impose a sem- blance of rationality, in terms of the dogged pursuit of state objectives. Although his dictum came to be regularly cited as an authority for civil- ian primacy over the military, Antulio Echevarria cautions that many of

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Clausewitz’s thoughts on politics and international confl ict, especially in the unrevised sections, were circular and deterministic. The key to Clausewitz’s greatness as theorist of war lay instead in the observation that was at the heart of his mature thought, that war was shaped by a

remarkable trinity—composed of primordial violence, hatred, and enmity, which are to be regarded as a blind natural force; of the play of chance and probability within which the creative spirit is free to roam; and of its element of subordination, as an instrument of policy, which makes [war] subject to reason alone. 17

His theory depended on the dynamic interplay of these three factors. The trinity superseded the dictum, for it suggested that politics was not in com- mand but one factor among three. With respect to the survival of the state in a challenging international system—which was how Clausewitz understood the concept—politics must always set the terms for war, but politics could not challenge the “grammar of war” lest it reduce the chances of success and so the achievement of the ultimate objective. This could in turn lead to military actions with great political consequences. Despite the apparent subordination of the military to politics, the dynamic quality of the trinity helped explained why the relationship was not so simple. 18

As a clash of opposing wills, a duel on a grand scale, war in the ideal sense tended to absolute violence. Having posed this possibility, Clausewitz pointed to the other two parts of the trinity to explain why it was unlikely to be realized. Politics was one source of restraint, but friction was another. This was one of Clausewitz’s most signifi cant contributions to military thought. Friction helped explain the difference between war as it might be—that is, absolute and unrestrained—and actual war. He explained the phenomenon in one of his most celebrated passages:

Everything in war is simple, but the simplest thing is diffi cult. The diffi culties accumulate and end by producing a kind of friction that is inconceivable unless one has experienced war . . . Countless minor incidents—the kind you can never really foresee—combine to lower the general level of performance, so that one always falls short of the intended goal.

The result was “effects that cannot be measured, just because they are largely due to chance.” Friction thus caused delay and confusion. Action in war became like walking in water, and vision was regularly obscured. “All actions take place in something virtually akin to dusk, which in addition, like fog or moonlight, gives objects an exaggerated size and a grotesque view.” 19

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Generals in charge of military organizations were doomed to disappoint- ment. Everything would take longer than it should, and it would be hard to generate the fl exibility needed to keep up with events.

Within the paradoxical trinity, violence and chance could still be sub- ordinated to politics and the application of reason. If the strategist did not apply reason, war would become progressively chaotic and unpredictable. The challenge for the intelligent strategist was to anticipate both the enemy and all those elements of friction and chance that got in the way. The cor- rect approach was not to give up and assume that chaos and unpredictability would mock all plans and overwhelm best efforts but rather to prepare for such eventualities in advance. The test of a great general was making a plan that he could see through. Clausewitz wrote about the need for the com- mander to be a military genius, but he did not necessarily mean an excep- tional, once-in-a-generation individual such as Napoleon. Genius required a grasp of the demands of war, the nature of the enemy, and the need to stay cool at all times. Indeed, Clausewitz was wary of the general who tried to be too smart. He preferred those who kept their imaginations in check and a fi rm grip on the harsh realities of battle.

So while his description of war suggested that the wise course would be to retain maximum fl exibility and prepare to seize opportunities as they arose, he came to the opposite conclusion, arguing for a clear plan of conduct based on a series of connected, sequential steps. He preferred a stress on careful planning without distractions. The strategist must “draft the plan of the war, and the aim will determine the series of actions intended to achieve it.” 20 A war should not be started without a plan for its conduct fi rmly in mind. Once implementation had begun, it should only be amended at times of unavoidable necessity. 21 Clausewitz’s defi nition of strategy as “the use of the engagement to achieve the objectives of the war” translated political goals into a military aim. The strategist would “shape the individual campaigns and, within these, decide on the individual engagements.” 22 Preferring to enter war with a plan for victory was understandable. But why the confi dence that any plan could be implemented?

Clausewitz offered three reasons. First, despite all the talk of unpredict- ability, not everything was a mystery. Certain actions had known effects. An enemy attacked from behind or caught in an ambush would exhibit lower morale and less bravery. Most importantly, it was possible to make relatively objective assessments of the opposing sides, taking into account their experience and their “spirit and temper.” While the enemy’s own plans and responses to situations could not be known exactly, the laws of prob- ability could be applied. Confronting an excitable visionary would require a

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different plan than that for an enemy known to be hard and calculating. The bold would be granted more respect than the cautious, the active more than the passive, and the clever more than the stupid.

A second factor was the unreliability of intelligence. Without a robust starting plan, occasional reports might cause an undue deviation:  “Many intelligence reports in war are contradictory; even more are false, and most are uncertain.” Furthermore, intelligence tended to have a pessimistic bias. The exaggeration of bad news led to gloomy and despondent commanders who conjured up landscapes of imagined perils:  “War has a way of mask- ing the stage with scenery crudely daubed with fearsome apparitions.” These vivid impressions overwhelmed systematic thought, and so “even the man who planned the operation and now sees it being carried out may well lose confi dence in his earlier judgment.” He must therefore exorcise false appear- ances by trusting instead in “the laws of probability” and in his own judg- ment gained from “knowledge of men and affairs and from common sense.” 23 With improved information gathering, Clausewitz’s advice to ignore timely intelligence now appears as more of a recipe for disaster than a means of avoiding unnecessary panic.

Third, both sides were subject to friction, so it was a poor excuse for defeat. The question was who could cope with it better. The essence of good generalship was to triumph over friction, to the extent possible, through both careful planning and maintaining a presence of mind when the unexpected happened. 24 “The good general must know friction in order to overcome it whenever possible, and in order not to expect a standard of achievement in his operations which this very friction makes impossible.” 25 This important qualifi cation warned against excessive strategic ambition.

So size mattered. Armies were “so much alike” that there was “little dif- ference between the best and the worst of them.” The most reliable means to success, in both tactics and strategy, was therefore superiority in num- bers:  “The skill of the greatest commanders may be counterbalanced by a two-to-one ratio in the fi ghting forces.” Clausewitz could see the attraction of cunning, indirect strategies, which could confuse the enemy and lower morale. He noted that it might be thought that “strategy” took its name from “trickery,” but he saw little historical evidence that tricks (stratagems) could be effective and considered it dangerous to make a false impression by deploying large forces, which might be left in the wrong position when they were really needed. At the tactical level, surprise was important and attain- able, but at the strategic level the mobilization and movement of forces were likely to give the game away. Friction was also a major factor, holding up the sort of movements necessary to catch the enemy unawares. So when it came to

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the choice of force or guile, Clausewitz opted for the former. The “strategist’s chessmen do not have the kind of mobility that is essential for stratagem and cunning . . . accurate and penetrating understanding is a more useful and essential asset for the commander than any gift for cunning.” His advice was to keep the plan simple, especially against a capable opponent. A simple plan would require the excellent execution of each engagement; for this reason, tactical success was vital. In this respect, the strategic plan survived so long as successive engagements were being won.

This put a premium on knowing when to stop. An enemy willing and able to redouble his efforts put a fi nal victory out of reach. Another important Clausewitzian concept was the “culminating point of victory,” the point at which further attack could lead to a reversal of fortunes. It was “important to calculate this point correctly when planning the campaign.” 26 This was about the developing balance of advantage as a campaign progressed. After being wounded, would the enemy collapse with exhaustion or be enraged? What were the distractions to be avoided, the opportunistic but diverting targets away from the main line of advance? There would be temptations to capture “certain geographical points” or seize “undefended provinces,” as if they had value in themselves as “windfall profi ts,” but that could put the main aim at risk. A consistent, focused approach should discourage disruption. Here were the reasons for Napoleon’s failure in 1812.

The Russian campaign and lack of confi dence in strategies based on sur- prise and complex maneuvers led Clausewitz to the view that the advantage lay with the defense. The forward movement necessary to occupy enemy ter- ritory taxed the attacker’s energies and resources, while the defender was able to use this time to prepare to receive the attacker. “Time which is allowed to pass unused accumulates to the credit of the defender.” Surprise could work as much in favor of the defense as the offense. It was about catching the enemy unawares with regard to “plans and dispositions, especially those concerning the distribution of forces.” The attacker was “free to strike at any point along the whole line of defense, and in full force,” but could still be surprised if the defender was stronger than expected at the spot chosen. The defender operated on familiar ground, could choose his position carefully, and enjoyed short supply lines and a friendly local population, which could be a source of intelligence and even reserves. Even if the offensive succeeded, the occupying force might be ground down through insurrectionary or partisan warfare, as Napoleon discovered in Spain. Moreover, so long as the defending state could avoid surrender, other states might join in on its side. According to prevailing notions of the “balance of power,” other states were likely to intervene against a determined aggressor in order to prevent it becoming too

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powerful. Even the strongest individual state could be defeated by an orga- nized coalition ranged against it and determined to restore equilibrium to the international system. This too Napoleon discovered to his cost. But while Clausewitz described defense as the stronger form of fi ghting, he also noted that its purpose was negative. It was limited, passive, concerned only with preservation. Only attack could secure the objectives of war. Defense was unavoidably preferred by the weak, but once there was a favorable balance of strength, the incentives were to move to the attack. “A sudden powerful transition to the offensive—the fl ashing sword of vengeance—is the greatest moment for the defense.” 27

When it came to the offense, another important Clausewitzian concept was the “center of gravity” ( Schwerpunkt ). Along with a number of his other concepts, including friction, this was taken from the physics of the day. A center of gravity represented the point where the forces of gravity could be said to converge within an object, the spot at which the object’s weight was balanced in all directions. Striking at or otherwise upsetting the center of gravity could cause objects to lose balance and fall to the ground. For a simple, symmetrical shape, fi nding the center of gravity was straightfor- ward. Once an object had moving parts or changes in composition, the center would be constantly shifting. Clausewitz never quite got to grips with the metaphor. “A center of gravity,” he explained, “is always found where the mass is concentrated the most densely. It presents the most effective tar- get for a blow; furthermore, the heaviest blow is that struck by the center of gravity.” The Schwerpunkt was “the central feature of the enemy’s power” and therefore “the point against which all our energies should be directed.” This required tracing back the “ultimate substance” of enemy strength to its source and then directing the attack against this source. The target might not be a concentration of physical strength but possibly the point where enemy forces connected and were given direction. Any disruption would maximize effects beyond the immediate point to the larger whole.

Though he did not fully follow this through, Clausewitz recognized that the critical point might be a capital city or the coherence of an alliance. With respect to alliances, which had been central to the ebb and fl ow of the Napoleonic Wars, Clausewitz understood that individual members would always have their own interests at the fore and that joining an alliance could carry risks (for example, by attracting force away from a partner or by having to aid a much weaker partner). If the alliance was to prosper, it needed a unity of political purpose or at least “the interests and forces of most of the allies” must be “subordinate to those of the leader.” This offered a center of gravity that an opponent could challenge, disrupting the alliance by encouraging

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disunity. 28 Not all peacetime alliances even turned into a joint enterprise against a common foe, as the matter became akin to a “business deal” and actions were “clogged with diplomatic reservations.” 29

From this it can be seen that the identity of a center of gravity was not obvious. The concept only made any sense if it was assumed that the enemy could be viewed holistically, as a unity, so that an attack on the point where it came together could throw it off balance or cause collapse. But there might be no obvious single focal point, if the enemy did not present itself in that way. On this basis, a loose coalition might be harder to disrupt than a tight alliance, although it might fi ght less effectively for the same reason. 30 If the enemy was not totally committed—for example, in a limited war—there might be even less reason to expect that a blow against its army would have an impact much beyond the area in which it was committed. Yet it was this concept, as much as any other of Clausewitz’s, that came to be embedded in Western military thought, although often as a source of confusion rather than clarity.

The Sources of Victory

As Clausewitz described the nature of war, strategy became a sustained act of will, required in order to master its terrible uncertainties and resulting from human frailties and the capricious impact of chance. Since the enemy faced the same problems, it was still possible to prevail by bringing superior force to bear against the enemy’s center of gravity. Clausewitz was of the view, almost taken for granted in his time, that once the enemy army was defeated in battle, the route to victory was clear. Without an army a state was help- less. It could either be eliminated, gobbled up in its entirety, or forced to accept whatever terms the victor might impose. Because of this, states would do everything possible to avoid defeat and carry on the fi ght in some way. In the new post-1789 era, this was as much a matter of popular enthusiasm as governmental judgment.

Clausewitz understood how policy linked the statesman and the gen- eral:  policy gave the general his objectives and the resources available to meet them. As for these objectives, Strachan refers to a creed of 1815, “For me the chief rules of politics [or policy] are: never be helpless; expect noth- ing from the generosity of another; do not give up an objective before it becomes impossible; hold sacred the honor of the state.” 31 In giving direction to strategy, therefore, policy was essentially an expression of national inter- ests in relations with other states. Clausewitz acknowledged, but did not

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really explore, the impact of the internal politics of the state on strategy, as a particular form of friction. It was important that the commander-in-chief be part of government, in order to be able to explain the strategy being fol- lowed and help assess its relationship with policy. Clausewitz could not but be aware of how strong, popular national feelings created their own pressures for war and a determination to fi ght to the bitter end. It was, however, largely through a growing sense of the limits of what could be achieved through war that he began to consider the possibility of war pursued for limited ends, as it had been in the eighteenth century.

Though a state that had lost its army was effectively beaten, “victory consists not only in the occupation of the battlefi eld, but in the destruc- tion of the enemy’s physical and psychic forces, which is usually not attained until the enemy is pursued after a victorious battle.” 32 If enemy armed forces were destroyed, whatever was wanted from the enemy could be seized and its public opinion would be cowed. Yet, as at Borodino, total destruction of the enemy army might not be possible. Even if achieved, the result might only be temporary. A defeated enemy might rise again. It would harbor thoughts of revenge, of reversing the setback. As victory might be temporary rather than durable in its effects, it might be prudent to negotiate a settlement under the most favorable terms when the optimum position has been reached.

Napoleon’s career warned of the consequences of relying on military vic- tory as the sole means of achieving political objectives. He wanted complete hegemony in Europe. There was a notion, still to be found among some inter- national relations theorists, that this was an entirely natural goal for a great power. In practice, because victory could never be complete, it was a recipe for continuing war and eventually a friendless defeat. Napoleon’s stunning victories over the Austrians and Russians in 1805, and then the Prussians the next year, did not take them out of the picture. Having supinely accepted the result of battle, they re-entered the fi ght, this time understanding France’s methods better. As Napoleon discovered, the obvious counters to a regular army seeking a decisive battle were guerrilla warfare or reconstituted armies combining in a formidable coalition to ensure numerical superiority. He had relied on battle to achieve his objectives but did not have a clear notion of how these objectives could result in a new European political order with any sort of stability. It was hard to dominate the continent on the basis of meth- ods that others could copy. Undoubtedly a genius in battle, Napoleon lacked political subtlety. He inclined toward punitive peace terms and was poor at forging coalitions.

If the aim of war was a favorable peace, then military operations were a means to this end. War that was “a complete untrammeled, absolute

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manifestation of violence (as the pure concept would require)” would “usurp the place of policy the moment policy had brought it into being.” Policy would be driven away and war would rule by its own laws “very much like a mine that can explode only in the manner or direction predetermined by the setting.” 33 In accepting that war could be fought for limited objectives and was not inevitably absolute in means or ends, there were still perplexing problems. The more ambitious the objectives, the more a state would com- mit to war and the more violent it would become. But the corollary could not be guaranteed. A war begun with limited objectives might not be fought by correspondingly limited means. Combat might be infused with the pur- poses of war but was shaped by armies in opposition. This created a recip- rocal effect that could generate explosive forces from within, whatever the attempts to establish controls from without. We now tend to call this process “escalation.” Popular engagement could aggravate the effect. “Between two peoples and states such tensions, such a mass of hostile feeling, may exist,” Clausewitz observed, “that the slightest quarrel can produce a wholly dispro- portionate effect—a real explosion.” 34

In this tension we fi nd the clue to Clausewitz’s enduring infl uence. He understood that rational policy could impose itself on war, but it was always competing with the blind natural forces of “violence, hatred and enmity,” as well as probability and chance. He linked policy, chance, and hatred to gov- ernment, the army, and the people, respectively, although the link perhaps gave a restrictive, institutional form to these attributes. Each state had its own trinity, in tension within itself as well as with that of the opposing side. “Where policy is pitted against passion, where hostility ousts rationality, the characteristics of war itself can subordinate and usurp those of the ‘trin- ity.’ ” 35 This broader political context underlined the basic point. Clausewitz accepted that the military task should be set by the politicians. Once that had been accomplished, the military could expect the politicians to use a military victory to best advantage. At the time, the normal assumption was that a political victory would naturally follow a military victory. If the assumption was wrong, then strategy’s focus on military affairs was insuffi cient. It was about the clash of opposing forces when the real issue concerned the clash of opposing states.

The Roman origins of the word victory located it fi rmly in the military sphere. Jomini and Clausewitz understood that the objective of war came from outside the military sphere. Their basic instinct, however, was that with the “retirement of the enemy from the fi eld of battle,” terms could be imposed. There was some proportion between ends and means. But the prob- lem remained that while a military victory was measurable, a political victory

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was not necessarily so. The forms of resistance and disaffection a defeated people might show could soon compromise the apparent achievements on the battlefi eld. If the broader political consequences of war were diffi cult to anticipate, then the military was likely to be left exploring its own tan- gible goals without regard to the broader context. Moreover, as Napoleon’s career demonstrated, simply taking the same approach to military strategy in a series of repeat performances was unlikely to sustain a high level of results. Opponents would see the pattern and work out the counters. Brian Bond noted how this raised a fundamental problem: “If strategy was a sci- ence whose principles could be learnt what was to prevent all the belligerents learning them? In that case stalemate or attrition must result.” 36

Tell me how the Germans have trained you to fi ght Bonaparte by this

new science you call ‘strategy.’

—Tolstoy, War and Peace

The miseries and privations associated with the Napoleonic Wars led to the development of an international peace movement. Over the course of the nineteenth century, this movement encouraged the formation of “peace societies” and the convening of humanitarian conferences. War was denounced as not only uncivilized, wasteful, and destructive, but also funda- mentally irrational. In particular, it was an offense against economics. This was put most succinctly by John Stuart Mill in 1848: “It is commerce which is rapidly rendering war obsolete, by strengthening and multiplying the per- sonal interests which act in natural opposition to it.” The eager proponents of free trade saw how this could create forms of international intercourse that would render resort to war self-evidently foolish as well as awful, producing a formidable combination of morality and utilitarianism. 1

The British proponents of free trade might have thought this a far more effi cient way of managing international affairs than one based on nationalism and war, with peace dependent on a tenuous balance of power. From the per- spective of those less well placed, this appeared as a self-serving claim. The Prussian economist Friedrich List observed, in an argument that many still

The False Science chapter 8

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fi nd compelling, that free trade would result in “a universal subjection of the less advanced nations to the supremacy of the predominant manufacturing, commercial, and naval power.” 2 A far greater problem was to ignore the factor that had so stunned Clausewitz during his early military career, a force that “beggared all imagination.” The French Revolution had brought the people, with all their passion and fervor, to the fore. Napoleon had turned this into a source of his power, using it to develop his own personality cult and draw on popular enthusiasm to create an army with high morale and commitment, convinced of an inextricable, patriotic link between their own well-being and the success of the state. Clausewitz’s grasp of the signifi cance of this new factor, which led him to make it part of his trinity, helped make his theory so durable. He understood the impact of popular passion on how wars were fought, by undermining attempts at restraint, and he recognized nationalism as a source of war. As France became seen as a threat, people elsewhere rallied behind their own fl ags. The people identifi ed not with each other but with the nation. “Between two peoples,” Clausewitz observed, “there can be such tensions, such a mass of infl ammable material.” 3

This went against notions of progressive civility in international affairs and added a cautionary note to demands for greater democracy. It under- mined the claims of liberal reformers that war was an elite conspiracy. The speed and ease with which a belligerent nationalism could be tapped could therefore come as a rude shock to the radical, anti-war free-marketeers. The Crimean War that began just after the century’s midway point demonstrated the strength of popular enthusiasm (even in Britain) for war-making. Not for the last time would liberal reformers fi nd themselves caught between dispas- sionate utilitarianism and passionate democracy. This chapter discusses how this issue of war and politics was considered by two very distinctive person- alities, neither of whom were liberals: the Russian writer Count Leo Tolstoy, who disputed that mass armies were ever truly controlled by their generals, and the German Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke, who explored to the full the possibilities and limitations of command.

Tolstoy and History

The experience of Crimea had a very personal impact on Leo Tolstoy, a young, aristocratic Russian offi cer posted to Sebastapol during the war. Tolstoy was attracted to the good life but preoccupied with religion. He began to acquire fame as a writer by sending commentaries back from the front. They were fi lled with his sharp observations of how individuals were caught up in the

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arbitrariness of confl ict. Tolstoy witnessed Russian soldiers cut down by enemy fi re and their bodies left behind as the army retreated. He became increasingly annoyed at the insensitivity and incompetence of Russia’s elite and explored how literature could express the experiences of the peasantry as well as the nobility. In 1863, he began six years of work that would lead to his masterpiece, War and Peace . Though a diligent researcher who studied documents, interviewed survivors, and walked around the battlegrounds of 1812, his approach was antipathetic to that of professional historians, just as it broke with conventions of fi ction in its approach to plot. The book was, he explained, “what the author wanted and was able to express, in the form in which it is expressed.” Part of the mixture, introduced during the book’s later revisions, included short essays challenging conventional views of his- tory and, by extension, a Clausewitzian view of strategy.

Clausewitz represented much of what Tolstoy opposed. He even made a minor appearance in War and Peace . Prince Andrei Bolkonsky (assumed to be representing Tolstoy’s views) overheard a conversation between two Germans, Adjutant General Wolzogen and Clausewitz. One said, “The war must be extended widely,” and the other agreed that “the only aim is to weaken the enemy, so of course one cannot take into account the loss of pri- vate individuals.” This left Andrei cross. The extension would be in an area where his father, son, and sister were staying. His judgment was scornful. Prussia had “yielded up all Europe to him [Napoleon], and have now come to teach us. Fine teachers!” 4 Their theories were “not worth an empty eggshell.”

Tolstoy was hostile to the conceits of political leaders who mistakenly considered themselves to be in control of events, as well as historians who believed that they understood them. As even sympathetic readers found it hard to get to grips with his views—which were never likely to fi nd much favor with political, military, or intellectual elites—it is not surprising that his ideas had no infl uence on the actual practice of strategy in his time. But Tolstoy’s wider political infl uence spread during the rest of the century and affected attempts to develop nonviolent strategies. His general critique had its echoes over the next century.

Making sense of Tolstoy’s philosophy of history is no easy task. Indeed the erudition deployed by Isaiah Berlin in his attempt to do so was considered a small masterpiece in itself. 5 Tolstoy deplored the “great man theory of his- tory,” the idea that events were best explained by references to the wishes and decisions of individuals who through their position and special qualities were able to push events in one direction rather than another. His objection went beyond the normal complaint about such theories, that they underplayed the importance of broader economic, social, and political trends. Tolstoy

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appeared to distrust all theories that attempted to put the study of human affairs on a quasi-scientifi c basis by imposing abstract categories and assum- ing an inner rationality. General Pfühl would have attributed success to his theory of “oblique movement deduced by him from the history of Frederick the Great’s wars” but blamed failure on imperfect implementation.

Tolstoy stressed the “sum of men’s individual wills” rather than just those of the senior but ultimately deluded fi gures who believed that their deci- sions had signifi cant effects. He saw a dualism in man, in whom could be found both an individual life—free in its own way—and a “swarm-life” by which he “inevitably obeys laws laid down for him,” living consciously for himself but also as an “unconscious instrument in the attainment of the his- torical, universal, aims of humanity.” Here Tolstoy joined those who sought to reconcile the ability of individuals to choose and act independently with a conviction that humanity as a whole was following a distinct path, whether set down by a divine hand, historical forces, collective emotions, or the logic of the marketplace. At some point in this reconciliation, Tolstoy supposed, individual possibilities would become submerged by the whole. The chal- lenge in this philosophy was not to those low in the social structure but to those at the top, the elites who believed that they were making history.

One clear diffi culty with this thesis, even when Tolstoy was telling the story, was that the leading actors on the political stage did make a differ- ence, and their decisions had consequences. It would be odd to assert that European history would have been exactly the same had Napoleon not been born. Accepting that history could not be a pseudo-science did not require denying the possibility of systematic thought and conceptualization. It was also odd to use Napoleon’s performance at Borodino to debunk the great man theory of history. This was, as Gallie notes, “one of the strangest, least typi- cal, of campaigns known to history,” yet Tolstoy uses it to make points of uni- versal validity to be applied to matters far less strange and atypical. 6 Tolstoy showed the emperor pretending to be master of events over which in practice he had no control. He was all bustle and activity, beguiled by an “artifi cial phantasm of life,” issuing orders of great precision too far from the battlefi eld to make a real difference: “none of his orders were executed and during the battle he did not know what was going on.” Instead, he played out a role as “representative of authority.” According to Tolstoy, he did this rather well. “He did nothing harmful to the progress of the battle, as he inclined to the most reasonable opinions, made no confusion, did not contradict himself, did not get frightened or run away from the fi eld of battle, but with great tact and military experience carried out his role of appearing to command calmly and with dignity.” The orders he sent out rarely made sense to those receiving

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them, and what he heard in return was often overtaken by events by the time it reached him. This was not, however, Napoleon’s problem that day: he was unwell and, unusually for him, uncertain about where to put his main effort. Then, when he had his opportunity to scatter the enemy, he lacked the reserve strength to take it. Tolstoy hardly chose this particular great man at the height of his power. When describing Napoleon at Austerlitz, Tolstoy recognized those qualities which made his contemporaries treat the emperor with awe and admiration, however grudging.

By contrast, Tolstoy was kind to Kutuzov, who was portrayed as having an inner wisdom despite his apparent stupidity, because he grasped the logic of the situation. When it came to knowledge of the supposed military sciences, Napoleon had the advantage over Kutuzov, but the Russian understood something deeper and more profound, and could see how the situation was bound to develop. Kutuzov told Prince Andrei that “time and patience are the strongest warriors.” The young man concluded that the old man could grasp “the inevitable march of events” and had the wisdom to avoid med- dling. In this way, Kutuzov’s passivity during the battle refl ected wisdom more than inertia, a reliance on the army’s spirit rather than a commander’s orders. The only time he issued an order was at the point of defeat. It was to prepare for a counterattack, impossible in the circumstances. The aim was to give heart to his men rather than convey a real intention. In Tolstoy’s account, the French offensive fl oundered because they lacked the moral force to press on, while the Russians had the moral force to resist.

Tolstoy’s contempt for the “new science” of strategy was a warning against the “erroneous idea that the command which precedes the event causes the event.” Though thousands of commands would be issued, historians focused only on the few executed that were consistent with events while forgetting “the others that were not executed because they could not be.” 7 This was a challenge to a strategic approach that generated plans and issued orders for actions that could affect few of the many factors in play and was based on ignorance about the actual state of affairs. Tolstoy described chaotic delib- erations in July 1812, when Russian commanders wondered how to cope with the advancing Napoleon. At issue was whether to abandon the camp at Drissa. For one general, the problem was that the camp had a river behind it; for another, that was what constituted its value. Prince Andrei listened to the cacophony of voices and opinions and all these “surmises, plans, refuta- tions, and shouts” and concluded that “there is not and cannot be any science of war, and that therefore there can be no such thing as a military genius.” In these matters, the conditions and circumstances were unknown and could not be defi ned. Not enough was understood about the strength of Russian

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or French forces. All depended “on innumerable conditions, the signifi cance of which is determined at a particular moment which arrives no one knows when.” The attribution of genius to military men refl ected no more than the pomp and power with which they were invested, and the sycophants who fl attered them. Not only were there no special qualities that made for a good commander, but a commander seemed to function most effectively without “the highest and best human attributes—love, poetry, tenderness, and philo- sophic inquiring doubt.” The success of military action depended not on such people but rather “on the man in the ranks who shouts, ‘We are lost!’ or who shouts, ‘Hurrah!’ ” 8

Battle was inherently confusing, and there was unlikely to be a clear link between orders as cause and actions as effect. But part of strategy was to understand what battle could and could not achieve. In this regard, Russia’s fate was determined by strategy as much as any elemental forces beyond human comprehension. As Lieven notes, Tolstoy failed to credit the clarity of the Tsar’s strategy and the extent to which events unfolded according to plan, as the Tsar anticipated. Nonetheless, more than “all the history books ever written,” War and Peace shaped popular perceptions of Napoleon’s defeat. “By denying any rational direction of events in 1812 by human actors and imply- ing that military professionalism was a German disease Tolstoy feeds rather easily into Western interpretations of 1812 which blame snow or chance for French defeat.” 9 It was one thing to acknowledge that military organizations would not always be responsive to the demands of the center. Orders would be misinterpreted; intelligence would be faulty; original campaign plans would need to be modifi ed and at times supplanted. It was entirely different to insist that commands could never be effectual and change the course of a battle or to deny the potential of leadership; the relevance of intelligence, advice, and orders; and the infl uence of professional experience, training, and competence. Perhaps for Tolstoy, developing his anarchist philosophy, less important than whether some were able to shape events more than others was whether they should ever be able to do so. In objecting to the very idea of the exercise of power, the arrogance of those who claimed to control the lives of others, he sought to minimize its impact.

The issue for Tolstoy was not that events lacked causes but that there were so many. Historians picked the most obvious and thus missed out on so many more. As Berlin put it, “No theories can possibly fi t the immense variety of possible human behavior, the vast multiplicity of minute, undiscoverable causes and effects which form that interplay of men and nature which history purports to record . ” 10 One sympathetic interpreter has sought to show how Tolstoy effectively punctured the pretensions of not only the philosophers of

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his time but also subsequent social scientists who took advantage of hind- sight by seeking only evidence or a singular factor that supported their theo- ries and ignoring anything contradictory. Historians also focused on decisive moments, but such moments were rare because outcomes were the produce of many separate moments, each containing its own contingent possibili- ties. Their explanations missed signifi cant aspects that remained hidden from view while giving undue prominence to others. This is why historical inter- pretations were regularly challenged and revised. On this basis, Gary Morson identifi ed with Tolstoy’s belief that true understanding only existed in the present and events were decided “on the instant.” This is why Kutuzov’s best advice before the battle was to get a good night’s sleep: immediate attentive- ness to unfolding possibilities was going to be more valuable than forward planning. 11

Salutary warnings about the limits to central control or grand theory were one thing; suggestions that everything came down to small, immediate deci- sions—as if some were no more important than others and past decisions had no consequences whatsoever for those which came later—were quite another. Historians might struggle to capture the totality of the processes they sought to explain, but there was always a possibility of reinterpretations. Historians looked to the past, while strategists addressed the future. The challenge was how to respond in unpredictable situations in which only certain factors were subject to infl uence but something still had to be done, such that inaction was also a portentous decision. With the benefi t of hindsight, the historian might see how it all might have been different. But choices had to be made at the time in the face of unknowns. Most seriously, there was a fundamental contradiction in this line of argument. Under the charge of irrelevance, the generals and their theories were left off the hook, perhaps looking foolish but no longer dangerous. If they were relevant they should be answerable for their follies.

Von Moltke

The year after War and Peace was published there was a fateful demonstra- tion of the strategist’s art that showed how consequential it could be, as well as its limitations. The occasion was the 1870 Franco-Prussian War, and the commanding fi gure was Field Marshal Helmuth Karl Bernhard Graf von Moltke. Von Moltke was a self-proclaimed follower of Clausewitz and one of his most effective promoters. He was even a student at the Prussian War College when the master was in charge. Although the two do not appear to

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have met, Clausewitz marked von Moltke’s report “exemplary.” Von Moltke read On War after it appeared in limited circulation in 1832. 12 He was born in the nineteenth century’s fi rst year and lived until its ninety-fi rst. He was chief of staff of the Prussian army for thirty years and can claim to be one of the century’s greatest and most successful military strategists.

Although born into the nobility, his family was poor. His army career began at the age of 11 when he was sent to cadet school in Denmark. Cultured and well read, he would have been classed as a liberal humanist until the revolutions of 1848 caused him to move abruptly to the right and become a tough patriot and uncompromising anti-socialist. He became chief of staff in 1857 and created the system that set the standards for military professional- ism for the next hundred years. He addressed all aspects of military organiza- tion, armament, training, and logistics. The fi rst war in which he made his mark was one against the Danes in 1864, but it was the campaigns that led to German unifi cation under Prussia and the supplanting of France as the strongest power in Europe that made his name.

Von Moltke wrote little about strategy. Gunther Rothenberg describes him as a “grammarian” who “engaged in very little abstract speculation.” 13 His most important contributions, which were written before and after his most spectacular success in the 1870 Franco-Prussian War, betray the infl u- ence of Clausewitz. Yet in two critical respects he moved beyond Clausewitz and the Napoleonic model. By the 1860s far more could be done with armies than had been possible at the start of the century, as a result of the arrival of the railways as well as improved road networks. Von Moltke was unusu- ally alert to the logistical potential of these developments, appreciating what could be achieved once it was possible to move mass armies with relative ease. He also recognized the potential for deadlock if both sides mobilized large human reserves and a war carried on without either side quite being able to bring it to a conclusion.

The second factor infl uencing von Moltke’s approach was that he inter- nalized Clausewitz’s dictum about war being a continuation of politics. He happily served his monarch and less happily shared infl uence with Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. He acquired as a result a sense of the uncertain fi t between political ends and military means, but also of the possibilities of limited war and the value of allies. While, à la Clausewitz, he believed the object of war was to “implement the government’s policy by force,” he grumbled that politicians (read Bismarck) might demand more from war than it could real- istically deliver. Once objectives were set, it was up to the military to realize them. “Political considerations can be taken into account only as long as they do not make demands that are militarily improper or impossible.” Yet

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if some ends could not be met, a dialogue between the military and politi- cal spheres was unavoidable: they could not work in splendid isolation from each other, one setting the ends and the other the means. This was evident in von Moltke’s defi nition of victory: “the highest goal attainable with available means.” His attitude toward battle was close to that of Clausewitz, but fi rmer in his conviction that victory was the best means to decide a war.

The victory in the decision by arms is the most important moment in war. Only victory breaks the enemy will and compels him to submit to our own. Neither the occupation of territory nor the capturing of fortifi ed places, but only the destruction of the enemy fi ghting-power will, as a rule, decide. This is thus the primary objective of operations.

This did not really help with wars fought for limited objectives when the effort required to destroy the enemy fi ghting power would not be commensurate.

More innovative in von Moltke’s approach to strategy was his refusal to be locked into any system or plan. He was responsible for the famous observation that “no plan survived contact with the enemy.” He told his commanders that war could not be “conducted on a green table” and was prepared to delegate authority so that they could respond to situations as they found them rather than how the high command expected them to be. He distrusted generalities and fi xed precepts. The important thing was to keep the objective in view while accepting the need for “practical adapta- tion.” He was wary of abstractions and attempts to establish general princi- ples. For von Moltke, strategy was instead a “free, practical, artistic activity” and a “system of expediencies.” 14 The choice of strategy might be based on common sense: the test of character was to fi nd this in situations of extreme stress. Because of Prussia’s challenging strategic position, there was always a risk of others joining in once a war had begun. Victory therefore had to be swift and conclusive, and that meant there was no option but to get on the offensive as soon as possible. At the same time, von Moltke was conscious of developing battlefi eld conditions, in particular the impact of increasingly deadly fi repower, so he was also anxious to avoid frontal assaults. Although he saw strategy as playing on the unpredictable aspects of confl icts and the unexpected opportunities this could create, at this point the task was handed over to tactics as strategy became “silent.” In this he took a different view from Clausewitz, who saw the completion of battle as a task for strat- egy. Von Moltke saw the tactical task as conceptually simple—destroying as much of the enemy force as possible—but practically challenging, which was why his preparations for battle were meticulous. Once battle was done strategy came back into play. 15

t h e f a l s e s c i e n c e 105

His approach, described as “strategic envelopment,” was based on con- centrating superior forces faster than the enemy and came to be a feature of German strategy thereafter. As with Napoleon and Clausewitz before him, von Moltke was in no doubt about the importance of numbers. Prior to war, size could be bolstered through coalition, and one of the consequences of the war of 1866 with Austria was to acquire allies among the smaller German states. During war, superior force could be brought to bear at a particular point, irrespective of the broader balance of power. To achieve this it was nec- essary to mobilize quickly, and this was the area where careful planning could make a difference. Under von Moltke, the general staff, which had long had a role in Prussian military preparations, was expanded and elevated. It became not only the source but also the custodian of military plans, responsible for design and then execution.

Von Moltke’s most radical innovation as a commander, which went against the textbooks of the time, was to divide his army so that both parts could be kept supplied until they would combine for the battle (“march divided; strike united”). The risks were that they might be caught separately and be overwhelmed, or brought together too quickly, thus putting a strain on sup- plies. In the 1866 war with Austria he used the railways to get his troops into position fi rst, even though Austria had been the fi rst to mobilize. Observers were staggered when he allowed his two armies to be separated by some one hundred miles. If the Austrian commanders had been more alert, this could have proved disastrous for von Moltke. In the end, the Austrians were caught by two armies arriving from different directions.

This victory set up a war with France for which von Moltke prepared carefully. This time he divided his army into three, giving him maximum fl exibility so he could react quickly as the French plan became apparent. He kept his options open until it was time to strike.

It is even better if the forces can be moved on the day of the battle from separate points against the battlefi eld itself. In other words, if the operations can be directed in such a manner that the last brief march from different directions leads to the front and into the fl ank of the enemy, then the strategy has achieved the best that it is able to achieve, and great results must follow.

This could not, however, be guaranteed. Factors of space and time might be calculated, but not the variables where decision-making would also depend upon “the outcome of previous minor battles, on the weather, on false news; in brief, on all that is called chance and luck in human affairs.” 16 Concentrate too early or too late and it might be impossible to recover.

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In the critical war with France in 1870, von Moltke’s victory was com- plete, at least in terms of the conventional phase of the war. He caught out the French army fi rst in Metz on August 18 and then two weeks later at Sedan. Not all of his commanders followed the plan, but their lapses were more than compensated for by the numerous mistakes and outdated methods of the French side. Although the French army was defeated after seven weeks, the war was not over. Irregular and regular forces came together in France to form a government of national defense. This was a vivid demonstration of how political victory did not always follow automatically from battlefi eld victory. As the Germans moved toward Paris, von Moltke was aware of the potential vulnerability of extended lines of communication and the continuing ability of the French navy to keep the country supplied. There was an argument with Chancellor Otto von Bismarck over whether to bombard Paris. Von Moltke was worried this would only stiffen French resistance and preferred a siege. Bismarck worried that a slow conclusion to the campaign might prompt Britain and Austria to enter the war on France’s side. The Kaiser agreed with his chancellor and the bombardment began in January 1871. The French government lacked the stomach for a fi ght and began to negotiate. It was still not over, for then there was a popular revolt, in the form of the Paris Commune. An improvised, irregular army animated by popular passions but lacking in discipline appalled von Moltke. 17 Nor was he much pleased with losing the debate over strategy. Bismarck had confessed, to his “shame,” that he had never read Clausewitz, but he had a clear view on the continuing role of politics once war had begun. “To fi x and limit the objects to be attained by the war, and to advise the monarch in respect of them, is and remains during the war just as before it a political function, and the manner in which these questions are solved cannot be without infl uence on the conduct of the war.” 18

Von Moltke accepted that the aims of war were determined by policy. Once fi ghting began, however, the military must be given a free hand: “strat- egy” must be “fully independent of policy.” This belief went back to the for- mation of the Prussian general staff after the defeat at Jena in 1806, in order to guard against princely incompetence. Von Moltke judged this role to be as essential as ever. Surround a commander in the fi eld with “independent and negative counselors” and nothing would ever get done. “They will pres- ent every diffi culty, they will have foreseen all eventualities; they will always be right; they will defeat every positive idea because they have none of their own. These counselors are the spoilers; they negate the Army leader.” 19 There was an unavoidable tension at the heart of von Moltke’s position. It was illu- minated by his reported conversation with crown prince Frederick William at the height of the crisis. Von Moltke explained that after Paris was taken

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the army would “push forward into the south of France in order to fi nally break the enemy’s power.” When asked about the risks of Prussian strength being exhausted so that battles could no longer be won, he denied the pos- sibility. “We must always win battles. We must throw France completely to the ground.” Then “we can dictate the kind of peace we want.” “What if,” wondered the crown prince, “we ourselves bleed to death in the process?” Von Moltke replied : “We shall not bleed to death and, if we do, we shall have got peace in return.” He was then asked whether he was informed about the current political situation, as this “might perhaps make such a course seem unwise.” “No,” the fi eld marshal replied, “I have only to concern myself with military matters.” 20

Out of these highly charged debates emerged a concept of crucial impor- tance for subsequent military thought. Stressing his delegated powers from the Kaiser to issue operational commands, von Moltke identifi ed the opera- tional level of war as the one within which the commander must expect no political interference. The episode over Paris might have just demonstrated the fantasy of this political exclusion, but for commanders in the fi eld this became an article of faith, essential to the proper and successful implementa- tion of strategy.

Git thar fustest with the mostest.

—General Nathan B. Forrest, quoted (probably incorrectly) on strategy

At the start of the twentieth century, the military historian Hans Delbrück argued that all military strategy could be divided into two basic forms. The fi rst, conforming to the majority view of the day was Niederwerfungsstrategie , the strategy of annihilation, which demanded a deci- sive battle to eliminate the enemy’s army. The second drew on Clausewitz’s note of 1827 which recognized the possibility for another type of war when the available military means could not deliver a decisive battle. 1 This Delbrück described as Ermattungsstrategie , the strategy of exhaustion, sometimes trans- lated as attrition. Whereas with a strategy of annihilation there was just one pole, the battle, with exhaustion there was another pole, involving a variety of ways to achieve the political ends of war, including occupying territory, destroying crops, and blockading. In the past, these alternative approaches, for want of better options, had often been used and could be effective. What was important was to be fl exible when deciding upon a strategy, to attend to the political realities of the time, and to not rely on a military strategy that might be beyond practical capacity.

Delbrück did not intend to imply that the strongest was bound to be attracted by annihilation whereas the weak were fated to do what they could through exhaustion. Exhaustion was not about a single decisive battle but

Annihilation or Exhaustion chapter 9

a n n i h i l a t i o n o r e x h a u s t i o n 109

about an extended campaign that would wear the enemy out. He mocked the idea of a “pure maneuver strategy that allows war to be conducted without bloodshed.” There was always a possibility of battle. His view of a strategy of exhaustion was more operational than an anticipation of the later concept of attritional war. This placed more emphasis on how underlying economic, industrial, and demographic factors would sustain warfare.

Delbrück’s analysis led him into furious arguments with the historians of the German general staff, especially when Delbrück argued that Frederick the Great had practiced limited war rather than decisive battle. The history was on his side, in that Frederick had become wary of battle and careful in his ambition, but there was still a problem with the dichotomous presentation of complex options. 2 The problem was to suggest that a fundamental choice had to be made in advance about how to comport an army for a coming war, a tendency that remained evident in strategic debate over the coming cen- tury. The challenge for Delbrück at this time, however, was to get German generals to contemplate anything other than a swift offensive leading to the annihilation of the enemy army in a decisive battle.

The American Civil War

The complex relationship between theory and practice in strategy was revealed by the American Civil War (1861–1865). At one level, the out- come of the war was the result of the North enjoying twice the population and far greater industrial strength than the South. For much of the war the Confederacy could claim more imaginative generals. As the weaker side it might have been tempted to rely on defensive tactics, but instead often took the military initiative, perhaps in the hope that the North would respect the outcome of a truly decisive battle. President Lincoln saw clearly that the Union’s strategy required an offensive, but to his exasperation his generals seemed to be unable to mount one successfully until quite late in the war.

Clausewitz had no discernible infl uence on these events. That was not so with Jomini. The leading teacher at West Point, Dennis Mahan, had spent time in France studying the Napoleonic Wars and was an avowed Jominian, while his star pupil, Henry “Old Brains” Halleck, who became President Lincoln’s general-in-chief, had gone so far as to translate Jomini’s Life of Napoleon into English. Mahan celebrated Napoleon’s military art,

by which an enemy is broken and utterly dispersed by one and the same blow. No futilities of preparation; no uncertain feeling about in

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search of the key point; no hesitancy upon the decisive moment; the whole fi eld of view taken in by one eagle glance; what could not be seen divined by an unerring instinct; clouds of light troops thrown forward to bewilder his foe; a crashing fi re of cannon in mass opened upon him; the rush of the impetuous column into the gaps made by the artillery; the overwhelming charge of the resistless cuirassier; fol- lowed by the lancer and the hussar to sweep up the broken dispersed bands; such were the tactical lessons taught in almost every battle of this great military period. 3

Halleck was a senior general at the start of the war and soon became gen- eral in chief. His specialty as an engineer, however, was fortifi cation, and that gave him a regard for defenses that was never wholly in keeping with Mahan’s call for “vigor on the fi eld and rapidity of pursuit.” A combination of expertise in defensive methods, including digging trenches and deadly rifl ed muskets, was bound to inhibit frontal assaults. This caution was also evident in the Union’s fi rst general-in-chief, George McLellan.

Jomini’s infl uence among the generals is evident in their focus on lines of communication and their opposition to Lincoln’s proposals to mount a series of concurrent attacks against the South, including coastal operations. This they judged to be an affront to the principles of war as it would require divided forces. It was just the sort of proposal to be expected from an untu- tored civilian. 4 Lincoln, who never doubted that this would be a long, wearing battle, was reluctant to press his own views but was ready to replace his gen- erals in the hope of fi nding someone who would take the fi ght to the enemy. The generals were wary of the defense’s potential and were so enamored with the idea of a decisive battle that they were reluctant to risk their forces in anything else. As General McClellan put it: “I do not wish to waste life in useless battles, but prefer to strike at the heart.” Lincoln became increasingly frustrated by a preference for maneuvers over assaults. This he described dis- paragingly as “strategy.” “That’s the word—strategy!” he exclaimed in 1862, “General McClellan thinks he is going to whip the rebels by strategy.” 5 It described a form of warfare that did everything with an army but fi ght. Feints, maneuvers, and other clever moves might win the occasional battle, but it was brute force, relentlessly applied, that made the difference. When the South was eventually penetrated, exposing the limits of the Confederacy’s defenses, Lincoln was prepared to accept the benefi ts: “Now, gentleman, that was true strategy because the enemy was diverted from his purpose.” 6

Robert E. Lee of the Confederacy had made his own studies of Napoleon and was totally convinced of the need to go on the offensive to annihilate

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enemy forces. He knew that he could not mount a successful passive defense and so had to take the initiative, using maneuvers to get into the best posi- tion but then accepting battle. But this involved high casualties, and the Union side did at least understand defenses. Lee had set a goal for victory that he could not realize, and he suffered the consequences. The rival armies were “too big, too resilient, too thoroughly sustained by the will of democratic governments” to be destroyed “in a single Napoleonic battle.” Ulysses Grant saw the logic clearly and brutally. The terrible loss of life in both armies had achieved little, observed Grant, but he understood that the North could survive the losses better than the South and so he decided to embark on “as desperate fi ghting as the world has ever witnessed,” locking Lee’s forces in constant combat until he barely had an army left. 7 Meanwhile, Grant sent General Sherman to make life miserable for the people of the South, bring home the costs of the war, and make it harder to sustain an army in the fi eld.

Lincoln’s own contribution was to press ahead in January 1863 with the Emancipation Proclamation that freed slaves in the areas under rebellion, a move described as a “necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion.” This not only further unsettled the South but reinforced the Union army. By 1865, former slaves counted for 10 percent of its army. In the end this was a war of exhaustion. The leader of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, observed how the war’s “magnitude” had exceeded his expectations. “The enemy have displayed more power and energy and resources than I had attributed to them. Their fi nances have held out far better than I imagined would be the case . . . It is not possible that a war of the dimensions that this one has assumed, of proportions so gigantic, can be very long protracted. The com- batants must soon be exhausted.” 8

The Cult of the Offensive

Industrialization was expanding the numbers of men who could be orga- nized for war, while steam and electricity were making it easier to mobilize and transport them. Firepower was also steadily improving in its range and lethality. All this challenged commanders. The geographical scope of opera- tions and the numbers involved were expanding, while the limitations of weather were easing. The implications for logistics and the actual conduct of battle were uncertain. The politics of war was also changing. Because it drew on whole societies and national sentiments it was much harder to separate the military from the civilian spheres.

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The fact that individual battles in the American Civil War were not deci- sive and that the French continued to resist even after the apparently decisive battle of Sedan in 1870 warned of the limits to the established view of how to achieve victory in war. Yet so ingrained was the idea of a decisive battle that the urge was still to fi nd ways to force a satisfactory conclusion. Even those who sensed their own weakness in the face of superior numbers did not look so much to guile as to superior spirit. After the defeat of 1870–1871, French theorists glorifi ed the “offensive” and celebrated moral strength as the key to persuading their men to charge against enemy fi repower. 9 If the material balance of power was not going to guarantee victory, then the vital factor had to be found in something more spiritual—what British fi eld mar- shal Douglas Haig called “morale and a determination to conquer.” The key text was that of Ardant du Picq, who argued that everything depended on the emotional and moral state of the individual soldier. He was killed in the 1870 war but his work was published posthumously in 1880 as Etudes sur le combat (Battle Studies). Its infl uence reached the French high command. Ferdinand Foch, who became supreme allied commander during the Great War, was convinced that the question of losing was about a psychological state of mind. Du Picq insisted that the physical impulse was nothing, the “moral impulse” everything. This lay “in the perception by the enemy of the resolution that animates you.” By the time the attack arrived, the defend- ers could be “disconcerted, wavering, worried, hesitant, vacillating.” 10 The doctrine of the offensive became offi cial French policy. It later came to be described as a “cult.”

German policy started from a different basis. Von Moltke had no doubt that if Germany could not achieve a quick victory in a future war, its position would soon become dire. The key premise accepted by all German strategists was that if the country was subjected to attack from both east and west it could soon be squeezed, unless one of the belligerents could be removed from the fi ght early on. After 1871, von Moltke became progressively more pessi- mistic about Germany’s ability to achieve this. As plans were developed for a war against both France and Russia, he realized the need to scale down politi- cal expectations even as the military demands became greater. He wanted to get Germany into the optimum position from which to negotiate a political settlement. That required going on the offensive (so as to acquire territory to be used in the eventual bargaining) rather than absorbing the offensives of others.

The intensity of the debate refl ected von Moltke’s successors’ determina- tion to avoid exhaustion. They could not bring themselves to prepare for an inevitable stalemate. They held to the conviction that when it came to the

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crunch, the new political order could and should be created through force of arms. As chief of the German general staff at the turn of the century, Alfred von Schlieffen epitomized this view. The secret, he believed, was to be found in combining a grand and compelling concept with meticulous attention to detail. In 1891, he described the “essential element in the art of strategy” as bringing “superior numbers into action. This is relatively easy when one is stronger from the outset, more diffi cult when one is weaker, and probably impossible when the numerical imbalance is very great.” 11 In the most prob- able contingencies for Germany, facing France from the west and Russia from the east, one enemy must be destroyed before the other was engaged. A fron- tal assault would cause excessive casualties, leaving insuffi cient capacity for future battles. It would therefore be necessary to take the initiative, fi rst outfl anking the enemy force and then destroying it. Von Schlieffen sought to address the challenge of friction and anticipate the enemy counterstrategy by insisting on careful planning. The whole campaign was choreographed from mobilization to victory. The enemy would have no choice but to follow the German script rather than its own. Contrary to the precepts of von Moltke, this allowed little scope for individual initiative or for much going wrong. Von Schlieffen was aware that there were few margins for error. He was there- fore prepared to take political risks, in particular by violating the neutrality of Belgium and Luxembourg, in order to reduce the military risks.

An intense debate has developed among military historians as to whether there really was ever a Schlieffen Plan, prepared just before von Moltke’s nephew (known as the Younger) took over as chief of the general staff in 1906. The German records are incomplete and whatever was bequeathed undoubt- edly was amended as circumstances changed. 12 At times the general staff looked to the east rather than the west and adjusted force levels. The think- ing in 1914, nevertheless, did follow an ingrained strategic concept, using envelopment to remove one enemy from the war at maximum speed with minimum losses. This strategy was outlined by von Moltke the Younger in December 1911, when he recommended that in all circumstances, Germany should open the campaign by directing all available resources against France.

In the battle against France lies the decision in the war. The Republic is our most dangerous enemy, but we can hope to bring about a rapid decision here. If France is beaten in the fi rst great battle, this country, which possesses no great manpower reserves, will hardly be in a posi- tion to conduct a long-lasting war. Russia, on the other hand, can shift her forces into the interior of her immeasurable land and can protract the war for an immeasurable time. Therefore, Germany’s entire effort

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must be focused on ending the war, at least on one front, with a single great blow as soon as possible. 13

The German offensive of August 1914 was the culmination of a century of developments in military thought and practice, updating the received wis- dom of the Napoleonic period for recent developments in communications and logistics. It broke from the Clausewitzian model by assuming, without evidence, that the offense could be the stronger form of warfare. As Strachan notes, the war plans of all European armies in 1914 were Jominian: “opera- tional plans for single campaigns, designed to achieve decisive success through maneuver according to certain principles.” 14 The enemy defenses would be circumvented and then engaged with a strength and momentum that would leave them reeling. This assumed high levels of commitment, skill, élan, and willpower; and an enemy that would fail to rise to the challenge.

This was a strategy that had been decided upon well in advance and to which all planning had been geared. To ensure that the plan was prop- erly executed, troops who could follow commands obediently and precisely were required. Instead of a Tolstoyan army of individuals shaping outcomes through numerous individual choices, this was a group turned by discipline and drill into instruments of the commander’s will. Where latitude was required for local initiatives in the face of unforeseeable developments, these would still refl ect the commanders’ intent, conveyed not only through direct communications but indirectly through a shared institutional culture and agreed doctrine. The systems of hierarchy and control, of specialized func- tions and their coordination, appeared as the highest stage of modern bureau- cratic development. The general staff had the pick of the brightest military brains. It set the standards for comprehensive planning and preparation of individuals to follow straightforward commands in trying conditions.

But none of this could guarantee success. Ensuring victory required that military imperatives take precedence over any diplomatic considerations. Most seriously this entailed violating Belgian neutrality, which made it more likely that Great Britain would enter the war and crush any actual or potential civilian resistance. Even then, promises of success depended on the assumed superiority of the army, whose resolute will would crush weaker nations that had inferior plans, poorer tactical grasp, and less-disciplined troops. Besides, there was no obvious alternative: there was neither the appe- tite nor the resources for a prolonged war of exhaustion, and there could be no other way of executing a war of annihilation. Other than the one most feared by the military, a progressive demilitarization and softening of the state, the only alternative was to use threats of war to get a better diplomatic

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settlement. As so much depended on getting in an effective fi rst blow, once mobilization began the political situation was soon out of control.

After Napoleon’s fall, the presumption that the great issues that divided states could be resolved through force of arms was taken for granted yet only tested on a few occasions. Though these occasions left the presumption rein- forced they also pointed to reasons for caution: the huge developments in transportation, in particular the railroads, which facilitated complex move- ments to encircle opponents and catch them unawares also made it possible to get fresh reserves to the front; industrialization had led to improvements in the weight, range, and accuracy of both artillery and small arms, mak- ing it possible to blast holes in defensive lines but also to make defending fi re against an onrushing army quite murderous. The basic lesson from the Napoleonic Wars, that there was only so much one country’s army, whatever the brilliance of its operations, could do against a much stronger alliance, remained in place. So was the lesson of 1871 that the stresses of war on a country could lead to popular anger and revolutionary surges. War was a radical instrument. It threatened to upturn the international order and unleash wild political forces at home. It was one thing to have a strategy for swift military action that would deal the enemy a knockout blow. But if the enemy survived then there were no compelling strategies for what came next.

Mahan and Corbett

While these debates about land offensives and decisive victories preoccupied continental powers, Great Britain, was content to rely upon its maritime strength. Naval strategy was a minority interest and was largely concerned with whatever Britain had done and was still doing to maintain its sprawl- ing empire and its intercontinental trade. The dominant concept was com- mand of the sea, which could be traced back to Thucydides. This essentially meant being able to move men and materiel wherever you wished without interference while being able to prevent the enemy’s attempt to do the same. In the nineteenth century, Great Britain enjoyed the command of the sea. It had managed to extract the maximum benefi t out of its naval assets, creat- ing an aura of irresistible strength, despatching warships to remind lesser powers of the country’s interests, conveying menace, providing assurance, and creating a bargaining position or infl icting blows on an upstart, all the while ensuring that the imperial lines of communication could be sustained and reinforced.

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This had not required consideration of how to beat an equivalent power in battle, the main preoccupation of land warfare, because for much of the nineteenth century, Britain did not face such a power. The French might once have mounted a challenge, but British naval superiority had been reasserted at Trafalgar in 1805. Since then, there had been no shortage of naval actions but also no serious challenge to Britain’s naval predominance. To maintain this happy state, the British concluded that they must always have a navy twice the size of any other. Only at the turn of the century, with the conver- sion to steam underway and Germany growing in industrial strength, was this standard threatened. Prior to the Great War, Britain maintained its top position, but only with a considerable effort.

It was late in the nineteenth century when naval power gained a theo- rist with a compelling thesis. Alfred Thayer Mahan, after an unhappy and indifferent naval career, found himself unexpectedly in charge of the new U.S. Naval War College in 1886. There he developed a series of lectures on the infl uence of sea power in history. This turned into his two most impor- tant books, the fi rst concluding with the French Revolution and the second in 1812. His writings were both prolix and—once retired from the Navy in 1896 until his death in 1914—prolifi c. 15 His focus was not so much on principles of strategy but on the relationship between naval and economic power, particularly how Britain’s ascent as a great power had depended not “by attempting great military operations on land, but by controlling the sea, and through the sea the world outside Europe.” 16 As an American he was seeking to encourage his country to follow the British example, not to chal- lenge Britain but to provide extra support so that the two countries could keep the seas open for trade.

His work was acclaimed in Britain. His central thesis, focusing on the failure of France to become a naval power while Britain succeeded, was congenial. Aspiring powers accepted the premise that the British experience told of the necessity for countries dependent on the sea to have large navies composed of large ships. While it has been argued that Mahan’s historical and geopolitical judgments deserve serious consideration, his views on the actual deployment of naval power were far less developed. 17 He repeatedly insisted that the principles of land and sea war were essentially the same, and for illumination of these principles he turned to Jomini, from whom he claimed to have “learned the few, very few, leading considerations in military combi- nation.” His father, Dennis, had been instrumental in ensuring that Jomini had such a positive reception in the United States. 18 This led to the stress on the decisive battle. The organized forces of the enemy must be the “chief objective.” This was “Jomini’s dictum,” piercing “like a two-edged sword

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to the joints and marrow of many specious propositions” and demanded a concentration of force (the “ABC” of any strategy) in preparation for battle. By following these principles, naval offi cers could achieve the same level of strategic maturity as their army counterparts. 19 Unfortunately, the “develop- ment of the Art of War at sea has been slower, and is now less advanced, than on shore,” Mahan observed. In “the race for material and mechanical develop- ment, sea-offi cers as a class have allowed their attention to be unduly diverted from the systematic study of the Conduct of War, which is their peculiar and main concern.” 20 He was, however, primarily a historian. When he tried to pull together his ideas on naval strategy into a single volume he confessed that it was the worst book he had written. 21

While Mahan was a great booster for naval power and gained countless admirers among American and British naval circles for doing so, his lasting theoretical contributions were limited. As with others who believed that his- tory offers timeless principles, he was unable to accommodate into his basic framework the massive changes in naval power resulting from the new tech- nologies exemplifi ed by steam power. As with others who sought to promote the virtues of one type of military power, he was nervous about it being seen as subordinate to another type, and so he dismissed the idea of using the navy to guard shore positions, to prevent it becoming a branch of the army. The role of navies was to compete with other navies for the command of the sea. As with others who were focused on decisive battles, Mahan showed little interest in more limited forms of engagement and was dismissive of engag- ing in commerce destruction until after the decisive naval battle, for victory would put enemy commerce at your mercy.

Very similar ideas were being developed in Germany by Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, who was responsible in the late nineteenth century for turning the navy of the recently unifi ed Germany from a second-rate force into a serious challenger to British naval supremacy. His vision was both ambi- tious and unimaginative. It was similar to Mahan’s except that while Mahan took his inspiration from Jomini, Tirpitz took his from Clausewitz. He was preparing for a future war at sea that would look very much like war on land, the “combat of fl eets against fl eets” to gain command of the sea. The model was explicitly derived from land warfare—he even wrote of the “battle of armies on water.” He argued that the navy’s “natural mission” was a “strate- gic offensive,” to seek victory in an “arranged mass battle.” Other possibili- ties, such as coastal bombardments and blockades, were impossible so long as “the opposing fl eet still exists and is ready for battle.” All this was despite the evident diffi culty of imposing on an enemy a naval battle he wished to avoid. 22

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While Mahan and Tirpitz sought to promote their countries as rising naval powers using remarkably similar concepts of the likely objectives and methods of war at sea, Britain lacked a naval strategist of note. As Winston Churchill observed after the Great War, the Royal Navy had made “no impor- tant contribution to naval literature.” Its “thought and study” were devoted to the daily routine. “We had brilliant experts of every description, brave and devoted hearts; but at the outset of the confl ict we had more captains of ships than captains of war.” The standard work on seapower had been writ- ten by an American admiral. The best that Britain had to offer was written by a civilian. 23 The civilian in question was Sir Julian Corbett. Measured and moderate in his analysis and prose, he provided the most substantial critique of the dominant ethos of the time, asserting the possibilities of limited war, raising questions about the focus on concentrating forces for a decisive battle on land, and suggesting why this was an inadequate way to think about war at sea. An occasional novelist with a background in law, Corbett lacked practical naval experience. This was often held against him, along with his skepticism regarding decisive battles and naval offensives and his readiness to challenge the great myths of British naval history (for example, those sur- rounding the 1805 Battle of Trafalgar).

Yet despite all of this, he was given a central role in naval education as a lecturer at the staff college. He also played a role in policymaking as an Admiralty insider, even during the Great War. He was then given the responsibility for overseeing the offi cial histories of the naval war. He was on the side of the reformers, trying to modernize the attitudes and culture of the Royal Navy. This made him a natural target for conservative elements in the maritime community. Although he was actively consulted during the war, the impact of his broad theories has been doubted. 24 During the Great War, one senior fi gure commended Corbett for having written “one of the best books in our language upon political and military strategy” from which all sorts of lessons, “some of inestimable value, may be gleaned.” But no one had time to read it. “Obviously history is written for schoolmasters and arm-chair strategists. Statesmen and warriors pick their way through the dark.” 25

His efforts to accommodate the views of those he was challenging made his work at times unnecessarily convoluted. Whereas Mahan was in some respects a polemicist writing for a receptive audience, Corbett was in a trick- ier position, a civilian writing for a skeptical audience. While Mahan sought to apply Jomini, Corbett began with Clausewitz, but with greater subtlety than Tirpitz. 26 Like Delbrück, Corbett picked up on those aspects of On War that allowed for the possibility of something other than decisive battle in

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an absolute war. The wisdom of Britain’s naval strategy, demonstrated by achieving so much with limited resources, was the result of a succession of limited engagements for limited purposes. It had managed to combine “naval and military action” to give the “contingent a weight and mobility that are beyond its intrinsic power.” 27 The potential of limited war at sea was com- pared to the potential for absolute war in continental Europe. There compact, nationalistic, and organized states bordered each other. If war came, popular feeling was apt to be high and it was possible to commit extra resource into the campaign if battles went badly. The further away from borders, the lower the political stakes and the greater the logistical problems. This made limita- tion and restraint more likely. The destruction of the enemy’s armed forces was a means to an end and not an end in itself. If the end could be achieved by different means, so much the better.

The vital question for strategy was not how to win a battle but how to exert pressure on the enemy’s society and government. This argued for consid- eration of blockade and attacks on commerce (“guerre de course”) as much as seeking out the enemy fl eet. Major or grand strategy was about the purposes of war, taking into account international relations and economic factors, to which the strategy for the actual conduct of war should be subordinate. As it was highly unlikely that a war would be decided solely by naval action, except possibly over time as a result of blockade, armies and navies should not be considered separately. “Since men live on the land and not upon the sea, great issues between nations at war have always been decided—except in the rarest cases—either by what your army can do against your enemy’s terri- tory and national life, or else by fear of what the fl eet makes possible for your army to do.” The relationship between land and sea forces was the business of maritime strategy, from which the fl eet’s specifi c tasks would emerge. That would be the business of a purely naval strategy.

The key to success on land was control of territory; at sea it was control of communications. This was because the sea did not lend itself to possession. Offensive and defensive operations would tend to merge into one another. Because of this, the loss of command of the sea, which meant that passage might be opposed, did not necessarily imply that another power enjoyed command. “The command is normally in dispute. It is this state of dispute with which naval strategy is most nearly concerned.” Corbett could see why it would be desirable to seek out and destroy the enemy fl eet to gain com- mand of the sea—the equivalent of a Napoleonic decisive battle—but he also understood why it might not be possible. Trafalgar, he noted, was “ranked as one of the decisive battles of the world, and yet of all the great victories, there is not one which to all appearance was so barren of immediate result . . . It

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gave England fi nally the dominion of the seas, but it left Napoleon dictator of the continent.”

By exalting the offensive “into a fetish,” the defensive was discredited. Yet at sea the defensive was stronger because of the ease with which battle could be avoided. A fl eet that knew it was weaker would have every incentive to avoid the stronger. Unlike Mahan, Corbett saw great advantages in dispersal, such as avoiding a stronger fl eet, luring a weaker fl eet into danger under the illusion that it enjoyed local strength, and producing a winning combina- tion of ships. In this respect, the “ideal concentration” was “an appearance of weakness that covers a reality of strength.” The worst concentration, by the same token, would limit the area of the sea that could be controlled, leaving other parts vulnerable for any use. “The more you concentrate your force and efforts to secure the desired decision, the more you will expose your trade to sporadic attack.” 28 The Great War gave far more support to Corbett’s views rather than Mahan’s. The one great naval battle, at Jutland in 1915, was inconclusive and in Corbett’s eyes unnecessary, because the Royal Navy was still able to sustain a blockade that would have weakened Germany over time. Meanwhile, submarine warfare against British merchant shipping found Britain unprepared and only belatedly able to cope after adopting a convoy system.

Geopolitics

It may well be that other great powers would have followed Britain into building large navies if Mahan had never written a word, but he certainly gave these efforts legitimacy and credibility. They were bound up with what was essentially a mercantilist vision of economic strength, protected and enhanced through the exertion of military power. Presenting the oceans as containing their own sea lanes, pathways for commerce that could be guaran- teed by a naval hegemon, Mahan introduced a concept that took hold among maritime enthusiasts. His thesis was vigorously championed by President Theodore Roosevelt, who was something of a naval historian himself in an earlier life, and led to a major expansion in the U.S. fl eet after 1907.

Perhaps because the British were aware that their days of naval superiority were numbered, it was not only Corbett who provided an important quali- fi cation to Mahan’s thesis. A quite different perspective was provided by the geographer, adventurer, and politician Sir Halford Mackinder. Mahan was addressing what he assumed to be a real choice for the United States: whether to be a continental or a maritime power. For that reason he bemoaned the

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fascination with developing the country’s interior to the detriment of its sea- boards. Mackinder did not accept this dichotomy. In an essay delivered to the Royal Geographical Society in 1904, he explained why it was possible for a land power to acquire strength from the interior which could then be applied to create a navy. 29 A maritime power, and certainly a small island such as Britain, lacked this option. New forms of transport, particularly rail, would make it possible to exploit interior resources in a way that would have been impossible when movement depended on horses. He looked at the great Eurasian landmass and saw how either Germany or Russia (or the two in combination) could come to control it all, from which they would gain such economic power that it would be a comparatively small matter to project it out to sea. Mackinder explained in 1905: “Half a continent may ultimately outbuild and outman an island.” 30 On this basis he saw an increasing vul- nerability, which Britain could only address by closer integration with her empire.

His theory was given a more mature expression in a book published just after the First World War in which he gave the Eurasian interior its name, the “heartland.” This was the “region to which under modern condi- tions, sea-power can be refused access.” 31 He divided the world into a core “World-Island”—which was potentially self-suffi cient, comprising Eurasia and Africa—with the rest of the islands—including the Americas, Australia, Japan, the British Isles, and Oceania—around the “periphery.” These smaller islands required sea transport to function. Despite Germany’s defeat in 1918, Mackinder saw the basic danger remaining of “ever-increasing strategical opportunities to land-power as against sea-power.” This resulted in the advice to keep “the German and the Slav” apart. Three maxims fl owed from his anal- ysis: “Who rules East Europe controls the heartland; Who rules the heartland commands the World-Island; Who rules the World-Island commands the World.” 32 The importance of distance, which Mackinder saw being trans- formed by railways and motorized transport, was eventually affected even more by the ability of aircraft to fl y over both land and sea. Surprisingly, Mackinder paid little attention to the possibilities of air power though it was only a few weeks before he gave his seminal paper in 1904 that the Wright brothers made their historic fi rst fl ight.

There was much that Mackinder shared with Mahan. International rela- tions were understood in terms of relentless competition among naturally expansive great powers. What Mackinder introduced was a way of thinking about the geographical dimension that showed how the land and sea could be understood as part of the same world system, and as a source of continuity even as political and technological change affected its relevance. He was not

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a geographical determinist, accepting that power balances would also depend on “the relative number, virility, equipment, and organization of the com- peting peoples.” 33 What Mackinder offered was a way of rooting the higher- level strategic discourse in the interaction between states and the enduring features of their environment.

Mackinder never used the term “geopolitics.” It was coined by the Swede Rudolf Kjellén, who was a student of Friedrich Ratzel, the fi rst geographer to focus on political geography. Kjellén’s works were translated into German and picked up by Karl Haushofer, a former General who founded the German geopolitical school. 34 Although he was not a Nazi, Haushofer refl ected a world view that thought naturally in terms of distinctive ethnic groups occupying suffi cient space to exercise economic independence (autarky). The logic of “lebensraum” (the need to expand living space) became part of Nazi ideology. Such associations left geopolitics discredited. 35 Mackinder’s more nuanced approach provided a context for the parochial concerns of individual states but also reinforced anxieties that there might be a route for a hostile power (for this option was not available to Britain) to eventual world domi- nation. This idea infl uenced the titanic struggles of the coming century. It encouraged the view that there were a number of timeless imperatives aris- ing out of the structure of international politics that states ignored at their peril. These encouraged a focus on the more conservative notions of nation- ality and territory and played down considerations of ideology and values, though these might well have been the most important factors when it came to deciding what was worth fi ghting for and with whom it was desirable to forge and maintain alliances. So, while geopolitics appeared to move strategy to a higher plane than one which concentrated solely on the operational art, it suffered from the same defect of failing to attend to the wider political context.