Riding the Red Horse (54 page)

Surprise

Surprise demands we: “
Strike the enemy at a time or place or in a manner for which he is unprepared.
” People get a little confused about that for several reasons, and they usually overestimate the effect of surprise. One reason is that surprise is almost always relative; it is almost never absolute. A second is that it tends to be limited in scope. For example, there’s no doubt that the Imperial Japanese Navy surprised the U.S. Navy tactically and operationally at Pearl Harbor. But strategically, their surprise was ineffective and irrelevant, because we already had nearly every capital ship we used to defeat Japan on order. In fact, most of them had already been laid down and were in the process of being manufactured. Japan could do nothing about that and as a result, their surprise was strategically impotent.

A third reason for the limits on the usefulness of surprise is that it doesn’t usually come cheap. The greater the surprise for which you aim, the greater the price you will have to pay to achieve that surprise. You may pay it in confusion, in wear and tear, in risk, in providing a warning to enemy forces you cannot surprise, in the poor positioning of your own forces, and so forth.

Surprise’s handmaiden, Deception, also comes with hidden costs. Even inflatable fake-tanks with heaters in them designed to deceive air-to-ground missiles cost money and require manpower to set them up and move them around. A command whose entire purpose is to simulate a faux unit by faking radio traffic can consume precious time, equipment and specialist manpower.

Surprise can also be doctrinal and qualitative, as the Spartans discovered at Leuctra. Or you can inflict surprise on yourself, to the enemy’s advantage, as when the US military unexpectedly discovered that its theories were incorrect and epicanthic folds did not mean that the Japanese would be poor fighter pilots. Arrogance and sheer overconfidence would probably deserve their own Principle were it not that they are implicitly covered by Surprise.

Security

“
Never permit the enemy to acquire an unexpected advantage
”. Security is the other side of Surprise; don’t let the enemy surprise you. One would think that would be so obvious as to require no emphasis, yet the history of war is replete with numerous examples of forces and commanders that neglected this basic principle. The examples, indeed, are too many to even hope to list. However, note that Security comes from different things. Some of these aspects are active, such as patrolling, while others are passive, meaning things like camouflage, positioning, and dispersal.

But there is also the aspect of initative to Security, as when an enemy is routed and reeling, he is usually unlikely to be able to summon the presence of mind or sufficient force to regain the initiative and surprise you. On the other hand, see the comment above on arrogance and overconfidence and observe who is running Rwanda these days. From a Security perspective, the Wehrmacht's doctrine of immediate counterattack, as well as the Arab tactic of false-retreat, should never be forgotten by the commander who thinks his troops have already won the day.

Maneuver

“
Place the enemy in a disadvantageous position through the flexible application of combat power.
” Note that word, “Flexible.” In some armed forces lists of principles, the equivalent concept is “Flexibility.” The 2008
FM 3-0
, in fact, says expressly that Maneuver “
requires flexibility in thought, plans, and operations.
”

Whatever word we use isn’t nearly as important as having a clear understanding of the concept. Although Maneuver usually involves physical movement against physical things, it is more enabled by a flexible mind, one that is slave to neither old dogma nor new fad, than by any mechanical or procedural approach.

At Leuctra, Epaminondas, the Theban commander, showed that flexibility of mind in recognizing the weaknesses of the phalanx system and devising a new way to overcome it. At Cannae, Hannibal appears to have understood the Roman legion better than they understood it themselves, and used that understanding against the Romans in a historically epic battle of maneuver and annihilation.
^[12]

In the Great War, German infiltration tactics coupled with a new approach to the use of artillery in the attack very nearly won the war for them. Those century-old tactics, that Mr. Lind calls 3rd Generation Warfare, remain the basis of sound infantry tactics to this day. But none of these tactical innovations were developed mechanically or procedurally, but were first by flexible minds, and were subsequently carried out by other flexible minds capable of understanding and applying them. Also, we shouldn’t forget that it was the weaknesses and gaps created by Georg Bruechmueller’s artillery action that allowed the subsequent infiltration and exploitation by the infantry; without that fire action, it is unlikely the grunts would have been able to achieve any penetration given the density of troops on the Western Front in 1917.

Just as Objective can be non-physical, so meaningful Maneuver may also be non-physical or, at least, not involve direct physical force. For example, an unconventional enemy, attempting to undermine our home front, may engage in direct combat without any particular eye to tactically maneuvering in that combat action. Instead he may choose to engage in sheer unimaginative attrition warfare, because what he is actually doing is racking up a body count on both sides intended to undermine our confidence and willingness to continue the contest.

Offensive

Neither wars nor battles are won by defensive measures alone. This is why the Principle of Offensive orders us to “
Seize, retain, and exploit the initiative.
” Offensive generally aligns with Mass, and is supported by Economy of Force.

However, perhaps no Principle of War is as subject to misuse by idiots, or is as likely to generate disaster even without idiocy, as Offensive. Think of it as a grand rolling of the dice, possibly loaded, possibly not, with ruin being the price of coming up snake eyes. Consider:

1. The Athenian Expedition against Syracuse, especially the night attack up the Epipolae,
   
2. Varro at Cannae
   
3. Watling Street
   
4. Adrianople
   
5. Agincourt
   
6. The Turks in the Great Siege of Malta
   
7. Cartegena de Indias
   
8. Napoleon in Russia
   
9. Little Big Horn
   
10. The Somme
    
11. Operation Barbarossa
    
12. Midway
    
13. Dien Binh Phu
    

I am not saying that Offensive is a bad idea or a negative Principle. Necessary ideas cannot be bad ones. I am simply pointing out that it is inherently risky. Note that few, if any, of the offensives listed above were actually necessary at the time. Sometimes, however, as with local security patrolling, one must undertake offensive action, even expensive, unfavorable offensive action, so as to avoid completely yielding the initiative to the enemy.

There is a special subset of Offensive, which has been utilized by a few very skilled practitioners. Three in particular stand out. One was Belisarius, the great Byzantine general, another was Mikhail Kutuzov, who defeated Napoleon, and the third, Georgy Zhukov, who crushed Hitler and the Third Reich.[14] Their approach was to adopt the defensive, and take advantage of the benefits offered by a defensive posture to bleed their enemies, confuse them, demoralize them, and let them decisively fix themselves, before unleashing a devastating counter-offensive.

I’ve mentioned that the Offensive is risky. It is also expensive in terms of both men and material, though not necessarily as expensive as never attacking.

Attrition

This is another of my three candidates for elevation to a formal Principle of War. Again, it meets the criteria of being true from the beginning—muscles tired, spears broke, skulls were cracked, armor was damaged, and men sickened from their “muddy marching in the painful field.” I can conceive of no likely circumstances when Attrition will cease to be an integral aspect of war. Attrition costs the individual, it costs the unit to which he belongs, it costs the army in which he marches, and it costs the society from which he springs. The extent of attritional costs and the importance of those cost can vary considerably from level to level—what is complete ruin for an individual means little to a corps and less to society—but it still represents a cost.

Of course, everything in war comes at a cost, including doing nothing at all. It’s simply in the nature of the thing. It’s also in the nature of war that performing a rational cost-benefit analysis is extremely problematic, which is another way of saying “delusional”. War doesn’t lend itself well to fine-tuned calculations. That’s why it’s an art rather than a science.

Attrition is not entirely my own idea, being conceptually similar to the British Principle of War, Sustainment, and the Soviet Principle, Logistics. One difference is that Attrition presupposes that everything costs, which is always true, while Sustainment and Logistics presuppose that all losses should be made good, which is true, and can be made good, which is not always true. Another difference is that Sustainment and Logistics operate primarily on the physical level, while there are non-physical things that can be attritted. That being said, in both British and Soviet cases, attrition of a non-physical aspect, morale, is covered in some way. The British include Maintenance of Morale among their Principles of War, while the Russians still incorporate the Soviet principles Exploitation of Moral and Political Factors into their doctrine.

One of the more important uses of the Principles of War are as a layer of defense against nonsensical theories. Attrition plays a huge part in that defense, raising the question, “Sounds great in theory. What’s it going to cost? And can we bear that cost long enough to win the war?”

Unity of Command

“
For every objective, ensure unity of effort under one responsible commander.
”

Oddly enough, this doesn’t pop up within an army at war as often as one might expect, and where it has surfaced, there has often been a political reason behind it. This is despite the fact that violating the principle has proven disastrous one more than occasion. However, violation of Unity of Command is sometimes cited where no violation actually took place, or where the violation wasn’t truly relevant.

The classic case usually cited is the Roman practice of alternating command between consuls when both consular armies were joined, as happened at Cannae. There were sound political reasons for doing this, essentially the same reasons the United States utilizes its various balances of power, with its three branches of government, splitting the legislative power between House and Senate, and dividing sovereignty between the federal and state governments.

So Cannae was not actually a violation of the Principle. There was no doubt who was in command the day of the battle. No specific negative effect that led to the famous defeat can be traced to the legions' alternated command either. Instead, the disaster simply came about because Varro was in command on the Roman side on that day, while Hannibal was commanding the Carthaginians. Suppose that Varro’s co-consul Paulus, had dropped dead of a stroke two weeks before the battle, no election was arranged in the interim, and Varro held the sole command. What happens then? Exactly the same thing, one must assume, perhaps even a day or two sooner. The problem, the cause of the disaster, was a matter of personality, not of principle.

There is, in fact, quite a lot of erroneous assuming that correlation equals causation whenever this principle is discussed. Many of those assumptions don’t hold up under scrutiny. Some of it is pointless, because Unity of Command is not always achievable. Where the lack of Unity of Command tends to genuinely appear as a harbinger of disaster, it has usually been driven by politics. Sometimes those politics are within or between the armed services. Sometimes they are between the services and the government, or in some cases, where different national governments joined in a coalition understandably insisted on retaining control over their own forces.

Indeed, the problems in creating Unity of Command in coalition warfare are very nearly insurmountable. Take the insubordinate subordinate from an important ally. How is he to be disciplined? What does one do if he simply will not obey orders, and is sufficiently well-connected politically so that he cannot be removed? Resign? Threaten to resign? Is there a replacement who will be an adequate substitute? What if the likely replacement is your insubordinate subordinate?

The classic case of the example above is Eisenhower in the Second World War. I am not a huge fan of Eisenhower as a soldier and I don’t care for the approach he took to prepare for the invasion of Normandy, which Martin van Creveld does a good job of deconstructing. I think Eisenhower tended towards excessive conservatism in operations, bordering on timidity. Of course, all of that is fairly meaningless given that he managed to achieve victory in the end. And Eisenhower did a marvelous job of cat herding, and herding rabid, arrogant cats at that, that possibly no one else could have done.

Simplicity

“
Prepare clear, uncomplicated plans and clear, concise orders to ensure thorough understanding.
”

That advice from
3-0
would be fine except that it almost totally misses the point. Simplicity is not just about your planning and orders. Rather, it has to do with a complete outlook and set of values. A military organization is a very complex beast. War is a very complex activity. And in war, your enemy tries to make it more complex still, and will succeed in doing so without even consciously trying. A commander barely knows what’s going on with his own force; his enemy is a fuzzy shape in the distance. Weather changes and adds complexity, the very Shape of the ground is intrinsically complex. Tides. Sandstorms. Thunderstorms. Key equipment will often prove unreliable, the more so the more technologically advanced—and therefore complex—it is. Even the bloody
sun
will interfere with your communications. Guerillas mine roads and ambush troop movements in your rear. Nearly everyone is scared to death most of the time and quite a few are terrified all the time. Gas! Bugs! Chemicals! Nukes!