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By Lieutenant Sean Coughlin, U.S. Marine Corps
Like the triple-canopy jungles of Panama, the new Marine Corps maneuver doctrine is shrouded in uncertainty. Applying it to the letter—in the fog of war—could spell disaster.
Maneuver warfare —as espoused in the new Fleet Marine Force Manual Warfighting (FMFM1)—is an excellent model, maybe the best yet, for explaining success or failure on the battlefield, or for providing a framework for the study of war. As doctrine, however, the model exceeds the bounds of its capabilities. It becomes a potentially hazardous operating concept.
Warfighting describes maneuver warfare as “a concept with which we can succeed against a numerically superior foe . . . in expeditionary situations in which public support for military action may be tepid and short-lived . . . (and) with which we can win quickly against a larger foe on his home soil, with minimal casualties and limited external support.” Attrition warfare, on the other hand, “seeks victory through the cumulative destruction of the enemy’s material assets by superior firepower and technology . . . (and) gauges progress in quantitative terms: battle damage assessments, ‘body counts,’ and terrain captured.”
By no coincidence, these two definitions call to mind images of the Vietnam War—what was done and not done in that conflict. The generals and colonels who now write Marine Corps doctrine are the same ones who fought as lieutenants and captains there. They seem to imply that the outcome of the war in Southeast Asia might have been different if we had been “fighting smart.”
By linking U.S. failures in Vietnam to attrition warfare, FMFM 1 makes maneuver warfare the only viable and logical alternative. Maneuver warfare attains an almost mystical status. It becomes a simple solution, the obvious answer to success in war. But maneuver warfare is not the easy answer. It does not invariably guarantee success, not matter how good it sounds.
The problem with the theory of maneuver warfare is, simply, that it provides a model, like any other theory. Historians, philosophers, and other thinkers like to paint a sequential, logical, and significant picture of the world. In real life this is rarely the case. Battle studies always focus on the chain of events and the intent of the opposing commanders. In reality, battles are almost wholly lacking in any sense of orderly progression.
The 1863 Battle of Gettysburg offers a good example. General Robert E.
Lee had no desire to fight the Army of the Potomac at Gettysburg, and General George G. Meade drafted a statement during the battle to the effect that he was fighting against his wishes and was not responsible for the outcome. Both generals were in a situation over which they had little control. And both were largely carried along by circumstances, even as they tried to shape them.
The few Union leaders who did know what was going on were either killed or wounded. General Lee was in the position of trying to maintain the momentum of his army’s success. The battle’s outcome was decided by the men on the ground, who fought with little sense of what was happening or why. Perhaps war should be studied from the ground up, as military historian and analyst John Keegan claims. Then the elaborate and tidy theories that serve the purpose now would not look quite as compelling.
A good theory will illuminate a problem. It will direct study and analysis and offer up the right questions to be asked. Maneuver warfare serves that purpose brilliantly, but when taken out of the classroom, it is still subject to the same laws of friction and uncertainty that life imposes on most theories. In the armed services, doctrine, manuals, publications, or any other form of institutionalized ideology are no substitutes for a well-educated and intellectually driven officer corps.
The warriors of the German Wehr- macht in World War II are often cited as classic practitioners of the art of maneuver warfare. The Marine Corps bases part of its doctrine on a model founded in their “successes” on the Eastern Front against numerically superior opponents. In the Maneuver Warfare Handbook (Boulder, CO: West- view Press, 1985), William S. Lind writes, “German assault tactics . . . (were) a devastating tactical tool. To see how devastating, you need only examine the crushing defeats suffered by advancing Russian forces early in 1943, defeats dealt by numerically inferior forces.” That the invasion of Russia was an almost Promethean undertaking, doomed to heroic and noble failure from the very beginning, and that vast Russian hordes simply overwhelmed the tough, tenacious, and finally desperate German infantryman as he slogged his way through the mud and cold of the Eastern Steppes, are parts of the Nazi mythos. Despite all its tactical brilliance and strategic initiative, however, the Wehrmacht took a bad beating.
Defeat is often dismissed as the consequence of quantity overwhelming quality. In Russia, the defeated used that excuse. But mass is not the only thing that wins battles or wars. Victory for the Russians was by no means inevitable. Premier Joseph Stalin had decimated the Red Army on the eve of the invasion, and the Soviets had performed miserably against the Finns only a year earlier. What ensured their success was the moral force that they had on their side, the same force the
North Vietnamese had on their side as well. This is the moral force that is so often spoken of and so little understood. Napoleon Bonaparte claimed that “the moral is to the physical as three is to one.” And he spoke with authority, for he saw his ragtag army of revolutionaries strike down the finest of the European armies in defeat. The moral force is not merely having the desire to win, it is having the absolute necessity and total commitment to win.
The German General Staff had assembled a formidable war machine and employed it well in the Soviet Union. They maximized combat power quickly at a single point. Command was decentralized, and the Wehrmacht’s momentum proved too much for the Red Army to handle. This was modem warfare at its finest. Operation Barbarossa worked brilliantly, as the Germans drove deep into Russian territory, cutting off entire Red Army divisions and wreaking havoc on Soviet lines of supply and communication. True to the precepts of maneuver warfare, the Germans sought not the destruction of the Red Army, but its tactical and strategic defeat. “The object of maneuver warfare is not so much to physically destroy as it is to shatter the enemy’s cohesion, organization, command, and psychological balance.” The Germans simply waited for Soviet capitulation, which should have been the inevitable result of their brilliant successes in the field. Such was not an illogical assumption, considering that all the other forces the Germans faced had fallen like so much chaff after the Wehrmacht shattered their “moral and physical cohesion—(their) ability to fight as an effective, coordinated whole.”
But the Red Army kept on fighting. Isolated, disorganized, and with few supplies and no centralized command, the Russians fought brilliantly. The German spearheads ground to a halt as all the bypassed pockets of Soviet resistance continued to fight back. And two years later, despite all its tactical and strategic expertise, the German Army was on the run in full-scale retreat, fighting for its very life.
The Germans had backed the Russians into a comer. In The Art Of War, 400-320 B.C. Chinese military theorist Sun Tzu wrote, “wild beasts, when at bay, fight desperately. How much more is this true of men! If they know there is no alternative they will fight to the death ... For it is the nature of soldiers to resist when surrounded; to fight to the death when there is no alternative, and when desperate to follow commands implicitly.” This is the moral factor in war, born of despair and hopelessness.
For some reason the champions of lost causes. Proponents would argue that the Confederate Army and the Wehrmacht were defeated by forces beyond their control, that they fought brilliantly at both the tactical and strategic level and are therefore worthy of emulation. But the waging of war cannot be so easily divided into these neat categories. The larger issues play equally important roles in waging war as tactical and strategic considerations. Great commanders have understood this. Those not-so-great have suffered because they did not. It is as much a leader’s job to know when to fight as it is to know how. If all conditions existed that Warfighting requires maneuver warfare to deal with—a numerically superior foe, limited external support and no public support, a foreign battleground, and tolerance of few casualties—then a wise decision might be not to fight.
Carl von Clausewitz is much maligned as the philosopher of war whose ideas led to the devastation and loss of life in World War I, but he understood the nature of war and its awful truths. War must be waged totally. It involves tremendous commitment. There is no easy answer; no solution to the problem of war guarantees success. Thinking that maneuver warfare offers this answer is not only wrong, but quite dangerous.
“Fighting smart” should be the result of a thorough and total immersion into all aspects of the art of war. It can never be the result of a single publication that ascribes to one point of view. The focus of maneuver warfare is not victory, but maneuver. Sun Tzu is the darling of the Marine Corps University, but the philosopher most in favor should be Miyamoto Musashi, who knew that one should focus on victory exclusively. In A Book Of Five Rings he writes: “The primary thing when you take a sword in your hands is your intention to cut the enemy, whatever the means ... If you think only of hitting, springing, striking or touching the enemy, you will not actually be able to cut him. More than anything, you must be thinking of carrying your movement through to cutting him.” These words of wisdom are as applicable today as they were 300 years ago.
Lieutenant Coughlin is the Maintenance Management Officer for Marine Wing Support Squadron 372, Camp Pendleton, California. He is a 1987 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy.