Rethinking Security

In Memoriam: Paddy Griffith

I learned from several people over the weekend that Paddy Griffith, the former Sandhurst professor, military historian, and wargamer, had died in June. This is a tremendous loss not only for the military history profession but also the wider community of strategic studies and anyone who cares about the study of war and conflict.

Griffith was not a popular historian like Stephen Ambrose, an agenda-setting one like Martin van Creveld, or a specialist. Though he wrote academic military history he also worked extensively on wargames. Griffith was a tremendously creative and playful historian who was not afraid to poke holes in old verities. His book Battle Tactics of the Civll War, for example, challenged the prevailing interpretation of the Civil War as a preview of World War I. His book Forward Into Battle also took aim at prevailing interpretations of 19th century warfare and the idea that the United States enjoyed tactical success in Vietnam, among other things. Griffith was not a contrarian for contrarianship's sake--he had serious, data-driven arguments that were respectable even if one disagreed with them. And they informed policy as well, as Forward Into Battle was tremendously influential on the writing of the 1993 edition of the Army's FM 100-5 Operations.

Griffith, as he explained in the opening pages of The Viking Way of War, was also an unabashed champion of combat-centric military history. He was interested in the tactics, strategies, and operations---something that has grown rarer in military history of late. He understood that battle was the soul of military history, and was not afraid to polemically argue for its importance. This does not mean that the other aspects---organization, strategic culture, sociological context, etc, are unimportant, but that war revolves around fighting and the way those fights occur is a legitimate and highly important topic of scholarly inquiry.

I'd highly recommend picking up Forward Into Battle, although it's best also read in concert with other books surrounding the historical eras he covers.

Belgium and Blowback

To add to my earlier post about the myth of "Roman COIN," it is worth asking what--if any--concrete strategic military benefits the policies of the German and Japanese armies in World War II derived from their policies of terror. Or for that matter, the Soviets in Afghanistan. The answer is none. Whatever success all of the above achieved was from their operational and strategic plans, doctrine, and resources. In contrast, the usage of barbarous means either delivered insignificant benefits, did not alter anything, or was actively counterproductive.

In the case of Germany in World War I, consider the harsh German policies in Belgium and the impact of posters like these in making it easier for President Wilson to mobilize a nation for intervention:

There isn't really much to be learned from this episode other than the fact that policies that are both stupid and unnecessarily cruel or destructive don't work--in either conventional war or COIN. Machiavelli, again, put it best when he said a Prince's power should be respected (i.e "it is better to be feared than loved"), but he should never do anything to make himself be hated. People often confuse Machiavelli's statement as a justification of injustice, when it is in fact the most cogent rebuttal of the "Roman COIN" myth ever written.

For the Win

New entry at RTJ about why winning wars is a concrete reason for the existence of serious War Studies (military history, strategic studies, international relations, etc) academic research and curriculums in America.

Combined Arms (or Lack Theorof)

A lot of the COIN-conventional debate hinges around whether or not the United States Army can or cannot execute combined arms operations. Since the term as used in the debate can at times be rather nebulous, I thought I'd actually read a history of combined arms organization in the 20th century--and picked up Jonathan M. House's aptly titled Combined Arms Warfare in the Twentieth Century. Published in April 2001 (before 9/11, Iraq, and the genesis of the COIN debate), the book charts the evolution of combined arms organization from the late 19th century up to the present. The book ends with a short analysis of the reasons behind the Russian failure in Chechnya in 1995.

Despite House's focus on combined arms organization and competencies, the book does rehash a lot of history most students of conflict may have also read in books by Robert Citino, John A. English and Hew Strachan on European operations and tactics. That being said, the reader benefits from extensive tables of organization and equipment (TOEs) that House supplies for units of many different armies. House also covers the post-Cold War period extensively and ties it together to the more meaty (and familiar) tale of 1914-1945. There are also a lot of other subjects covered tangentially such as the evolution of armored fighting vehicles (AFVs) that tend to be slighted in books of this type. The problem of AFV design and infantry employment (both mounted and dismounted) is a crucial story that House tells very well.

House's main theoretical point is that the trend of combined arms warfare is the devolution of combined arms competencies lower and lower down the chain, with smaller and smaller units acquiring combined arms competencies, a point often echoed by Sven Ortmann. House sees the division as a necessity for the complexity of modern operations and a base for task-organizing more specialized groups of smaller units for specific tasks. He is very much a stickler for balance and points out through a dizzying variety of examples what happens when armies forget the need for organizational balance.

There is, however, nothing that would satisfy partisans in either the COINdinista or COINtra camp. House is very strong on competent organization and the need for combined arms skills but he does not talk very much in a prescriptive sense about the maintaining of those skills beyond chastising those who think that modern operations do not require combined arms.

Review and Reading Update

I finished reading John Alger's The Quest for Victory: A History of the Principles of War a couple of days ago. I heard about the book when I first read Robert Leonhard's The Principles of War for the Information Age and looked at his bibliography. Leonhard is a genius in general (side note, I need to re-read that book )and I was eager to see where he had drawn his sources. Alger's book is a fairly dry look at the evolution of the idea of "principles of war"--which are now commonplace in most doctrinal manuals. Azar Gat covers the same ground but with a broader scope---although no focus on the "principles".

Alger is pretty ambivalent about the idea of "principles" but at the same time looks at them with an open mind. Although most people familiar with European military history probably aren't going to find the influence of Jomini in the 19th century a new revelation, it is still very striking how an analytical description of Napoleonic warfare was the guiding concept of operations for at least a century. If there is a flaw about the book, it is that it is narrowly focused on the principles that it sometimes misses the connection with the wider strategic and operational concepts that those principles were used to support in doctrine over the centuries. Alger's conclusion is not very strong as well, but as someone who tends to often not write strong conclusions either I sympathize. This is complicated material and often times there is not one or two clear lessons that can be taken.

If you have already read Gat I recommend picking this up, but it may be confusing otherwise. The issue of "principles" is a very knotty one, one that very much hinges on one's perspective on the philosophy of science, history, and the general theory of conflict. Jim Storr has pretty much explained the basis of how we should approach it. I'm waiting for his book's price to climb down so I can re-read it instead of the quick read I gave my library copy of it last year.

Next up for reading is Jonathan M. House's Combined Arms Warfare in the 20th Century and finishing my copy of Milan Vego's Joint Operational Warfare: Theory and Practice. The latter I read and re-read in installments--it is a large Naval War College textbook comprising about roughly 1,500 phonebook-sized pages and contains a CD-room filled with maps of the campaigns it cites.

Basil Liddell-Hart, Grand Strategy, and Modern Grand Strategy

Joseph Fouche writes in to comment about the confusion of grand strategy, looking at Basil Liddell-Hart's coining of the term. The story of how strategy turned into the very multifaceted term we see today is too great of a story to render here (although I recommend that anyone interested read this book by Michael Howard), but the term "grand strategy" and its evolution is very interesting.

In his book Strategy, Liddell-Hart coined the term "grand strategy" to describe choices pertaining to the overall conduct of great wars. He defines "grand strategy" on page 353 of my 1991 Meridian press version as "war policy." Now, the confusing aspect of this is that this is how we might define "strategy" today in the loose sense--e.g. when talking about Obama's strategy for Afghanistan or in a historical sense about Lincoln's strategy for winning the Civil War.

This, however, is not the understanding of "grand strategy" we have today. Starting with Edward Luttwak's Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire (Luttwak has written a new book about the Byzantine Empire), grand strategy has been used in books to refer to the overall method of a state for producing security for itself or making itself powerful. Paul Kennedy's edited compilation Grand Strategies in War and Peace and Rise and Fall of the Great Powers explicitly uses this framework. The William Murray and MacGregor Knox edited compilation The Making of Strategy: Rulers, States, and War also pioneered it. And the Clausewitzian Colin S. Gray has written a great deal on grand strategy as well.

So, what to say? First, the better works on the subject do not treat grand strategies as linear plans but a coherent or at least related set of practices over a long period of time. This is a good approach to take, as it emphasizes that rulers did not instinctively seek to craft a Seldon Foundation-esque master plan for eternity but discovered, through trial and error, a set of practices, ideas, and concepts of operations that worked for a given period of time. Perhaps a very important question (and one that has been alluded to) is what kinds of political cultures tend to produce these sets of practices, and whether they are imposed top-down, generated in a mixed fashion, or come emergently from below.

The ironic thing about Liddell-Hart's narrow conceptualization of grand strategy is that some of his most well-known books such as The British Way in Warfare, Defense of the West, and Deterrent or Defense, all looked at what we might understand today as "grand strategy." Azar Gat also famously counterfactually argued that Liddell-Hart, not Kennan, was the true father of containment.

Strategy and "Strategy"

Diplomatic historian Walter McDougall recently wrote this:

The most a wise statesman can do is imagine his ship of state on an infinite sea, with no port behind and no destination ahead, his sole responsibility being to weather the storms certain to come, and keep the ship on an even keel so long as he has the bridge.

I write this after an interesting Twitter conversation with Gunslinger of Ink Spots, which he later excerpted in his own reflections on strategy in America. Gunslinger points out a recurring dynamic. The upper layer of policy and strategy is thin and operational art, the solid bottom foundation, is filling in the void. The problem, however, is that operational art provides a narrow viewpoint to see the world. It is good as a cognitive ordering device for some things, but poor for others. When we try to use it as a strategic device, it magnifies our confusion because the blurs outside of our finely tuned vision are all the more distressing, frightening, and alien to us.

Of course, grand strategy is difficult to formulate--both in a historical and contemporary sense. And it may be, in fact, chimerical. I don't want to get back into the very esoteric dialogue that Zenpundit, Joseph Fouche, Smitten Eagle, and I (as well as countless other bloggers) had last year, but there is a very real question whether grand strategy is possible--especially today. Have we evolved the cognitive instruments to handle modern policy problems? Some of the joys of talking to someone with a British historical training like Aaron Ellis is the feel he has for the mundane persistence of these issues.

In the long-term the minimum role of the statesman and the policy official/strategist is what McDougall described. To keep the ship going, without any clear destination beyond his or her own very limited field of vision. When it comes to the conduct of war itself, we might begin to revive "strategic art"--or strategy as it was known before World War II. The alternative is to cycle through ever more elaborate concepts of operation without the guidance and framing that strategy provides.

Reading Update

I'm currently looking at John Alger's The Quest for Victory: The History of the Principles of War. It covers similar ground as Azar Gat's older A History of Military Thought, but sheds more light on roughly 250 years worth of trying to teach didactic principles of war. Disregard the one rather ad hominem Amazon review, it is worth picking up. A full review will follow when I'm done. I'm still working my way through Rudolf von Caemmerer's The Development of Strategical Science in the Nineteenth Century.

As you can tell from the rather antiquarian wording the book was published in 1905 and I've downloaded the Google Books as an EPUB to my iPhone. It makes a great way to pass time on the DC metro, where it's otherwise hard to read books while standing up or dodging spitballs from little children. This may take a while to finish due to the format (iPhone reading is slower than book book reading), but it has plenty of insights as well on the campaign science of that century. Moreover, Caemmerer is rather ruthless in debunking the Napoleonic strategies that still had admirers in his day, pointing out what many generals would painfully learn in 1914.

The Dawn of Operational Warfare?

I've now finished Claus Telp's excellent 2005 monograph on Napoleonic warfare, The Evolution of Operational Art 1740-1813: From Frederick the Great to Napoleon. The book is pricey, so use interlibrary loan or a corporate account if you can. It's also likely that a paperback version will come out eventually. So is a book about the time of Napoleon relevant to today? Extremely.

As Telp relates, what we understand as operational warfare--a blurring of strategic and tactical levels--once thought to be the product of the Industrial revolution, instead has its genesis in the transition between the respective military eras of Frederick the Great and Napoleon. He accomplishes this with detailed side-by-side cases studies of campaigns and innovation in the French and Prussian armies, as well as detailed reviews of the proto-operational theorists Guibert, Santa Cruz, and De Saxe.

Telp explodes the stereotype of 18th century warfare being timid and characterized by careful maneuver. The issue, especially in the Seven Years' War, was that limitations in coalition warfare, army organization, logistics, fortresses, and lack of all-arms formations and combined arms tactics prevented armies from realizing the ambitions of decisive battle they sought. The political and economic structures of pre-revolutionary France and Prussia were also simply not, for a variety of reasons, of generating the kind of political, economic, and social resources that would be necessary for the use of decisive operational warfare. So what changed?

There is no one single cause that this shift, and Telp's discussion can be sometimes difficult to follow. He struggles to accurately render the complexity of the political-economic-military shifts in the 70 years of change he chronicles. The short version is that both Prussia and France evolve distributed corps command and other operational instruments, supported by a quasi-"modern" state that in which the relationship between subject and sovereign has been decisively changed. The book really shines in its discussion of the 1806 Jena campaigns and the 1813 Leipzig campaigns, with helpful maps.

The book is relevant to defense readers today because of its complex discussion of military innovation. It is not a "hero" narrative with stodgy conservatives and heroic reformers. Many military intellectuals are both "innovative" and "conservative." Progress is not in a straight line, and even by 1813 there is still a good deal of problems with the Prussian warfighting style that would have to wait for correction over a long period of time.

It also demonstrates that even a loser eventually adapts. Prussia was annihilated in 1806 and forced to accept humiliating terms. It had no strategic depth due to French occupation troops. But the shock of the disaster enabled military reformers to press their case to Frederick William and his court. Radical changes were implemented that went far beyond the military realm. And in 1813 the French, whose military primacy was steadily eroding, caught the first glimpse of an future rout just as devastating as the one they inflicted in1806.

Occidentalism's Cost: War?

Although most commentators on Asia and Africa are familiar with Edward Said's "Orientalism" and its costs, few are familiar with the costs of its converse, "Occidentalism." The term, which refers to ignorant views on the West held by Easterners and even some Westerner "useful idiots," was coined by Ian Buruma in his 2005 collaboration with Avishai Margalit. Occidentalism, a coherent ideology, held by people ranging from Russian anarchists to Islamic terrorists, sees the West as spiritually bankrupt, prone to collapse, and incapable of exerting the sheer force of will to triumph in the cutthroat world of international politics.

Occidentalism is a way of rationalizing civilizational, national, and group failures. It misreads Western nations totally, and those who subscribe to it have often found at the cost of their own lives that when the gloves come off Western Nations can be tougher, more resilient, and more destructive than they realized. Those who hold Occidentalist beliefs also routinely overestimate their own power over world politics. The bizarre thing is that it is originally a Western, Splengerian ideology that came to migrate to the East and has been made into an Eastern one by countless dictators, insurgent, and terrorist groups.

So for all of the talk about America misreading Iran, one potential cause of war is Iran misreading America's domestic politics, Dan Drezner argues in a lengthy post. Saddam Hussein did so utterly, in which he bet (twice) on the idea that the US was so timid and afraid of casualties that it could be easily deterred through bellicose rhetoric and his army of rusting Soviet hulks.

The idea that Iran is ruled by religious fanatics out to sacrifice themselves for the 12th Imam is pure rubbish. But a scenario in which they, like other adversaries of America, might come to believe their own propaganda is a more serious problem in an environment that is starting to look more and more like an early Cold War standoff.