Generations of military men found it true: Battle was the harsh, unequivocal arbiter of war’s outcome, with vindication for the victor, acquiesence [sic] by the loser. Yet, in Southeast Asia, as we destroy the enemy’s caches without being able to destroy the enemy himself, we are not losing the battles, but we do not seem to be winning the war, either.
The conditioned reflex of the soldier is to seek battle. His fighting spirit and his reflexes are shaped by a doctrine which he and his peers question but rarely. Yet, the doctrine which maintains that battle is the crucial event in armed conflict and that decisive and victorious battle is indispensable to final victory should be questioned.
The most decisive battle is that one in which one force is annihilated. Accordingly, the offensive strategist must arrange for and win a battle of annihilation. The defensive strategist must prevent the annihilation of his force but he, too, if he wants victory, must ultimately annihilate the enemy.
The highest military operational art is that of creating conditions wherein a battle of annihilation can be imposed upon the opponent. Those conditions are exceptional and they frequently last only moments. To avoid a battle of annihilation, it usually suffices to retreat in time or to attack in an unexpected direction.
In the last analysis, success in a battle of annihilation depends not only on the victor’s superb tactics, but also on numerous other factors—e.g., organization, enemy intelligence, morale, armament, and topography. The mistakes of the vanquished are among the chief causes of their perdition, and sometimes those errors do not derive from stupidity but from compulsion or treason.
There have been few battles of annihilation that were fought between equal opponents. Most annihilations were inflicted, by a quantitatively and qualitatively vastly superior force, upon a weak and incompetent foe. Yet, in a war between distinctly unequal belligerents, annihilation is superfluous. By contrast, in a war between equal opponents, annihilation is not feasible: the side which pursues that elusive goal tends to destroy itself.
Once annihilation fails, the belligerents usually lock themselves in undesired wars of attrition. The strategy of attrition aims to reduce the enemy’s force slice by slice—hopefully the enemy’s force declines faster than one’s own. Finally, one side is beaten, owing to a combination of troubles, such as defeats, losses of troops and territory, command ineptness, governmental paralysis, domestic chaos, and collapsing national morale.
Is battle the optimal or only method which leads to defeat? Battle may be unavoidable in the process of disintegrating the enemy, but it cannot be optimal because it is too costly, and it cannot be exclusive because it cannot perform all strategic tasks. It is not even clear how battle is separated from other categories of combat. The Russians distinguish bitva (battle) from boi (engagement): the difference is defined by scale of objective, space, and time. The scale can be expressed in absolute measurements, such as numbers of troops and square miles of battlefield. But the ratio of such measurements to the magnitude of the whole conflict is far more significant. Stalingrad was a major battle of the war between the Soviet Union and Germany, but merely an engagement within the context of a world-wide struggle.
Battles, engagements, encounters, skirmishes, reconnaissance-in-force, not just battles alone, hurt the enemy; and not merely on the day of glory, but every day. And, of course, the strategist must minimize the attrition of his own force. If he is attuned to the self-preservation of national power and action capability, he will be sparing with combat on any scale. Whenever combat becomes inescapable, the smaller battle usually is preferable to the bigger.
Although numerous factors influence the course of the conflict, fighting co-determines the outcome of war, sometimes more and sometimes less. Yet, victory often is irrelevant. The Germans specialized in winning battles and losing wars. The Italians rarely won battles and they rarely lost wars. The Russian model allows the enemy to penetrate and over-reach himself, and then leaves the rest to General Winter. The British pride themselves on their ability to win the last battle and almost seem to think they need early defeats to get into trim. Hence, the notion that battle is the arbiter or disceptator of major conflict, is a fantasy.
The concept of the battle of annihilation, which would have to engulf the near totality of the armed forces on both sides, reveals itself to be applicable only to wars fought by small armies. In modem war, except perhaps in nuclear conflict, a battle of annihilation will tend to be a tactical operation of local significance.
Beginning with Sun Tsu, strategists often advised to avoid battle and to substitute for it what the French call manoeuvre, that is, moves to paralyze the opponent.
Modern technology has improved the chances of war without battle: a state can be outarmed so conclusively that it is reduced to choosing between surrender and destruction. One pre-war manoeuvre is to induce the loser to tolerate technological obsolescence, to institute partial unilateral disarmament, and to submit to political and psychological conditioning.
Naval strategists are familiar with the arguments for and against battle. Some naval strategies, notably blockade and fleet-in-being, are not battle-oriented; but it is understood that, for example, to sustain a blockade, the fleet may be compelled to contend in battle.
The Japanese reasoned that, after knocking out the U. S. Pacific Fleet, they would be able to exploit the resources of the Asian mainland and preclude a U. S. blockade. Pearl Harbor was a masterpiece of annihilation—but it destroyed only a fragment of U. S. seapower. By overrating the importance of battle, the Japanese uselessly dragged the United States into war. They could not have committed a worse blunder.
Germany could have won World War I only through sinking the British Grand Fleet. In such an event, the Germans could have blockaded Britain and the British blockade of Germany would have been broken. Although the Germans lacked the capability to defeat the Grand Fleet, they sortied. The British need not have bothered to leave base: the short-legged High Seas Fleet could not even make it to the high seas, let alone dominate the ocean. But the conditioned reflex took over and the battle of Jutland was joined. The British claimed victory because the Germans retreated; actually, the Germans were running out of fuel. The Germans claimed victory because they sank more capital ships than they lost themselves.
Are victory and defeat, then, merely events in the mind? No, sometimes such events are impressively real. Annihilation is defeat. But what is the criterion of victory? The British lost at Jutland because they were unable to realize their intention, which was to sink the High Seas Fleet. Likewise, the Germans lost because they failed to attain their objective. Hence, victory may be defined functionally as the attainment of an operational goal against military resistance. By this definition, most battles end inconclusively.
A missile force may be compared to a fleet-in-being. If it is triggered, it will not have much difficulty razing the cities. If the missiles are met by anti-missiles, the encounter may be described as a battle—but the outcome is statistically pre-determined by the respective weapons characteristics. The missiles that get through still raze their targets. A missile strike against missiles on the ground implements the doctrine that the hostile force is the true objective of military operations. But if the defender launches before he is hit, the two missile forces pass one another “in heaven,” and while the attacker demolishes empty holes, the defender destroys the attacker’s basic power.
Offensive battle is designed to strengthen one’s own absolute and relative power, and to break the links which hold the enemy edifice together. The purpose of defensive battle is to spoil hostile undertakings. Perhaps the real thrust of battle is not so much to de-energize the enemy but to energize and re-integrate one’s own nation.
Belisarius suggested that “the most complete and happy victory is to compel one’s enemy to give up his purpose, while suffering no harm oneself.” This is wishful thinking unless the prospective victor possesses overwhelming power.
Incidentally, Belisarius performed as Emperor Justinian’s eminently successful strategist. Like Napoleon, Justinian was one of the greatest law-givers of all time Perhaps history is hinting that great generalship includes a commitment to justice.
“Perhaps” is a word which reminds us that contingency always has been the uncrowned king of war Perhaps a lost battle hurts the enemy’s morale, but perhaps a dramatic defeat improves it. Perhaps offensive battle strains the enemy’s resources, but perhaps the attacker is straining himself still more. Perhaps conquest increases power, but perhaps it creates unmanageable vulnerabilities.
To destroy a major enemy, a coalition of equivalent states is required to provide the superior strength that is needed for the crunch. That coalition breaks apart at the burial of the fallen foe, where the seeds of future wars are planted with the same tender care as flowers are planted on a tomb. As soon as the seeds begin to sprout, the dead enemy resurrects. When the hour of a new danse macabre strikes, the causes of the earlier conflict may have disappeared and the erstwhile foe may become a friend. But perhaps it must all be done over again, as in World War II.
A strong force predictably defeats a weak force, whether by annihilation, such as Germany practiced on Holland in 1940, or by occupation as the Kremlin inflicted upon Czechoslovakia in 1968. But, who would have predicted the survival of Israel in 1948, or the Bay of Pigs fiasco?
An inferior power, then, through astute strategy may spoil the plans of stronger opponents. This was an art which Frederick the Great understood very well and on which his fame rests. Frederick compensated for his weakness by embarking upon a preventive war. Through movement and battle, he forestalled simultaneous attacks by his several enemies and nearly always managed to repel them successively. His ultimate fortune was achieved by stimulation of discord between his enemies and the moderation of his own war aims.
Frederick’s were the classical ingredients of success against strategic handicaps. Unfortunately, quality of generalship and weapons, and ability to manipulate enemies politically are hazardous to predict. Unpredictability reaches its maximum in the “fog of war” that results from insufficient intelligence, deception, and ignorance.
Still, despite uncertainty, battle may be mandatory. How else, for example, could an invasion be stopped? But, if the invader cannot be halted through battle, is it better strategy to sacrifice the force in a heroic gesture, or keep the soldiers alive? Is the vulnerable state best advised to prepare for demolitions and passive resistance?
Unhappily, the outcome of battle avoidance is just as unpredictable as the outcome of battle. Avoidance of battle may preserve much active strength, as the Soviets discovered in Czechoslovakia when they were compelled to substitute their soldiers for absentee industrial workers. What is worse for the invader—to suffer moderate battle losses or to immobilize large forces for notoriously demoralizing occupation duty? Yet, during World War II the Czechs synergically [sic] co-operated with the Germans and made them stronger.
It is predictable that most battles will lack decisiveness, and that victory and defeat will be mostly words describing an ambiguous situation. We must, therefore, think of battle as a highly important element but not as the essence of strategy.
We must question whether the enormous investment required by battle-oriented strategy and the carnage which results are worthwhile, or are perhaps self-defeating. The enemy cannot be bled without one’s own force bleeding. But why is the bleeding necessary when its effects are unpredictable? The casualties which the French suffered between 1914 and 1917, most of which could have been avoided, resulted in the eclipse of France. In World War I, the Tsar’s generals inflicted unnecessary bloodletting upon the Russian army and thus bear more responsibility for the Communist revolution than Marx and Lenin. Yet, the even bigger casualties the U.S.S.R. suffered 25 years later (some 14% of the total population) stabilized the Stalin dictatorship. During the Vietnam war, U. S. morale suffered, although American fatalities numbered less than 2/100 of one per cent of the population.
Conflict is an organized effort to reach international-political goals against opposition. Strategy is a deliberately selected usage of resources and techniques to neutralize resistance. War is conflict involving military force. Battle is a special effort to overcome military obstacles to the execution of strategic plans.
Battle is not the only technique to remove military hindrances, nor does it always fit the purpose. War, strategy, and battle must be means tailored to reach ends. Obviously, while many roads can lead to one point, one and the same road cannot possibly lead to different destinations.
The formula that the military mission is to impose one’s will upon the enemy is an abstraction—but war must be dealt with concretely.
Is it our will to force an aggressor to disgorge his conquests? Or is it our will to rectify borders and bestow independence upon a dominated nationality? Do we wish to prevent genocide? Do we want the opponent to change policy or do we want to replace the hostile government? Do we intend to overthrow the entire regime? Each objective calls for a different strategy.
Strategies also must reflect socio-political realities. There is a deeply entrenched belief that the current global conflict takes place between nation-states. Such was more or less the case during the first phase of World War I. Yet, World War II was a conflict that pivoted on party-states. The Germans misidentified the U.S.S.R. with Russia and mistook the Russians and Ukrainians for Communists—and they lost. We confused the Germans with the Nazis but were lucky enough to win the hard way, fighting at least one year longer than necessary and unwittingly implanting the Soviets in Berlin. Does insistence on battle make sense in the face of such naive and wrong identifications and of evidence suggesting that many of those who are being shot at are not really enemies but potential friends?
When, in 1965, the United States instituted large-scale action in Vietnam, the urgent problem was to save the country from immediate conquest. The threat was acute and had to be met. Since the enemy did not want to give battle, which would have been foolish, we had to search for him—an effort in which we became increasingly adept. We also wanted to destroy him—but in this effort we were unsuccessful. It was the American presence which stayed the danger, not the bleeding that was imposed upon the enemy.[1]
Consider a regular army confronted by a guerrilla force that is receiving assistance and “volunteers” from abroad, but otherwise is operating on its own. The guerrillas will avoid fighting, except to defend themselves, to ambush an easy prey, and to secure logistics. Their mission is not to battle the regular army to death but, together with a local revolutionary party, to build a revolutionary state within an antirevolutionary state. The secret revolutionary state is built by “conquering” people under the very nose of the hostile army that is holding the territory.
While establishing their own power, the guerrillas are tearing down the structure of the regime they want eliminated. This task is accomplished through terror and the systematic assassination of military and political cadres. As key positions become vacant, and the surviving officeholders are duly terrorized, revolutionaries gain access to the levers of command.
Unless this process is halted, the revolutionary state takes root and grows. Sooner or later, the guerrillas are able to fight in nearly every village, along every road, and close to most of the important locations. The guerrillas then provoke the army into pursuing them until most of the troops, guns, and tanks have been lured to safe distances from the populated areas. They delight in holding the army to “hot pursuit” and in staging battles to deflect attention. The government regulars boldly attack the flanks of bushes, encircle banana patches and rubber plantations, and risk their lives counting bodies. With “data” on casualties and “infiltration,” the computers score guerrilla losses, and the communiqués win battles. The core event, namely the growth of the revolutionary state, is studiously ignored.
At the moment when the guerrillas achieve a large measure of “omnipresence,” their shadow government begins to acquire “legitimacy;” which may be defined as the ability to obtain obedience to orders. With partial legitimacy, the revolutionaries gain partial control over the army, and through desertion, mutiny, and large-scale defection, pull military power over to their side. A chain reaction is underway. As the legitimacy of the established government is evaporating, there arises out of the underground a new regime which claims it has the title to rule. Obedience by the masses of the people ratifies the change.
In the midst of this travail, battle is mostly a matter of dramaturgy. The guerrilla enemy cannot be a target because he cannot be caught and worsted, and because most combat units are needed to search for the elusive insurgents who, even when found, are able to escape to outside sanctuaries. Yet, if military thinking were stirred up, the techniques of sociological warfare and political conquest, which are potentially the most effective antidotes against the revolutionary state, could be used. It would be feasible to trade off the killing of guerrillas against the prevention of guerrilla recruiting, the stimulation of desertion, and the collection of operational intelligence. Such an approach would give new value to the principle of economy of force which the theoreticians and practitioners of counterinsurgency have been consigning to limbo.
Sharp blows may be indispensible [sic] to get the guerrilla’s attention and to knock about any regulars that may be helping him. But hunting without catching the quarry invites derision. The giant who is tricked by elementary cunning is viewed with contempt.
Why, then, do we not ambush the guerrilla when he leaves his hideout and goes to work? If he does not bother to do his job, which he must perform among the people, let him sit in the jungle.
The point is that counterinsurgency forces must not be at the wrong place, but should be close to the masses of the population. Instead of chasing the guerrillas, they should block their access to the towns and villages—which does not exclude search and destroy operations to prevent the guerrillas from settling down.
The counterinsurgency mission is to stop guerrilla recruiting, to suppress terrorism, and to uproot the revolutionary state-within-the-state. The latter undertaking might involve seizing valuable positions like the Mekong Delta whose rice paddies have kept the insurgency going. Literally hundreds of concealed supply caches offer another tempting system of physical targets. The search for tunnels and caches would become fruitful as soon as the ties between the civilians and the revolutionaries begin breaking.
The infrastructure is like a ghost which reappears every night and vanishes in daylight. The ghost cannot be exorcised by the spirit of battle. Can the ghost be found? Yes, if intelligence, counterintelligence, and police are given the resources to identify the bodies carrying the brains that believe in the ghost.
Aside from suppression, the real job is to establish a more co-operative relationship with the civilian population. The youngsters who are thinking of becoming terrorists must be offered attractive alternatives. This example serves to illustrate how counterinsurgency may be conceived, not as an annihilative operation, but as systematic spoiling and building. The U. S. Marines have demonstrated mature understanding of this approach—it is too bad their constructive effort was condemned to remain a feasibility test.
There is little sense waging a Quixotic battle against battle which will remain a primary element of the military art. Nor is the threat of battle enough: the opponent needs to be made to worry about his security and survival.
A great power stays great only when from time to time it bloodies those who would be their enemies. But we misuse battle if we rely upon it to fight intangible “vapors,” as T. E. Lawrence put it.
We violate the military spirit still more if we do not develop an integrated strategy using those many techniques which may render battle truly effective and which, in turn, may be helped enormously by battle.
The time has come to grasp the essential difference between bitva (battle) and borba (struggle). The former is a duel between forces, the latter a contest between societies. Battle is an element of struggle, and deals with physical violence on a large scale. Struggle has physical components, but it is primarily concerned with power that is based in, and manifested through, the mind.
If war is fought to preserve or regain freedom, a Shakespearean strategy of “either victory, or else a grave” is hardly desirable. Strategy should rather be based on Lawrence’s dictum that freedom is “a pleasure only to be tasted by a man alive.” So is the better law which great strategists propose to institute. A strategy built upon life, law, and freedom would turn the traditional doctrines of war upside down; and there they may rest, until the character of conflict changes again.
Given superior, stronger, and more secure forces-in-being, fast operational reaction times, as well as combat readiness and eagerness to fight expedient battles—and only those—many modern wars should be conducted with a minimum of tactical contact and a maximum of military detachment. In the main, they should be contests between political parties which, through persuasion, example, compulsion, and organizational efficiency, should compete for legitimacy and acceptance by the mass of the people. For it is the people who render the ultimate verdict of defeat or victory.
__________
Born in Vienna where he earned his Ph.D. at Vienna University (1935), Doctor Possony served as Adviser to the French Air Ministry (1939-1940), as psychological warfare specialist in the Office of U. S. Naval Intelligence (1943-1946), and as Special Adviser to the Assistant Chief of Staff (Intelligence), U. S. Air Force (1946-1961). He is now an Associate, Foreign Policy Research Institute, University of Pennsylvania, and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace, Stanford, California. He has written many books on historical and military subjects and is Strategy and Military Affairs Editor of the American Security Council. In the last few years he has studied military events in Asia, and for this purpose made study trips to Vietnam, Thailand, Korea, Taiwan, and the Middle East.
[1] U. S. operational objectives in Vietnam may be divided into four broad groups: 1. liquidation of insurgency; 2. deterrence of future North Vietnamese aggressions in Southeast Asia; 3. suppression of future North Vietnamese aggressions in Southeast Asia; and 4. induction of policy changes in Hanoi.
The first objective has been enunciated by the United States. Objectives No. 2 and 4 are implied in U. S. policies. Objective No. 3 has neither been implied nor proclaimed. It may have been rejected.
The liquidation of the insurgency in South Vietnam requires the neutralization of the North Vietnamese army units which are fighting in support of the Vietcong.
The deterrence of future aggressions is dependent upon the successful defense of South Vietnam and the timely uprooting of Communist infrastructures in countries that are potential targets of attack.
The suppression of aggression could be achieved by the annihilation of the North Vietnamese army; the conquest of its base; the overthrow of the government that is committed to aggression; the denial to that government of resources needed for expansionist strategy; the strengthening of the states and forces that may become targets of attack; and pre-emptive spoiling operations.
The induction of policy changes in Hanoi, specifically the reorientation of North Vietnamese policy toward international collaboration, could be accomplished, for example, by overthrowing the dictatorship. This presupposes that the North Vietnamese army would be badly mauled, that severe food shortages and other economic difficulties—plus a chaotic political situation—would emerge from the war, and that the army would turn against the government. Given costly strategic failure and army opposition to continued aggression, the government in power may on its own institute major policy changes to prevent overthrow. In the absent of army opposition to aggression and/or the dictatorship, fundamental policy changes would have to be imposed on the dictatorship by various types of direct military pressure. If Hanoi’s policy cannot be changed, each new aggression would have to be handled as a separate strategic challenge. Repeated and protracted spoiling operations could be undertaken to gain time until Hanoi’s political situation evolves.
Several of the strategies that could be devised to reach the stated objectives would be supplementary, others mutually exclusive. Yet. all of them should be based on the insights that, barring nuclear weapons, battles of annihilation are probably infeasible; that those annihilative battles which might occur, probably will be indecisive, that not all North Vietnamese citizens favor aggression or are Communists; that the dictatorship is ideologically weak and probably will become increasingly vulnerable; and that the internal contradictions in North Vietnam can be aggravated from outside.