Science, Strategy and War The Strategic Theory of ... - Boekje Pienter

and terror produced fear, anxiety and superstition. This in turn undermined an opponent’sresolve and will to resist 41 . The outnumbered Mongols were capable of creating theimpression of being everywhere and coming from nowhere. Mobility, swiftness and terrorcombined to produce collapse by draining the opponent’s moral fiber 42 . Thus he makes theconnection between physical movement and the moral factors:Subversive propaganda, clever stratagems, fast breaking maneuvers, and calculatedterror not only created vulnerabilities and weaknesses, but also played upon moralfactors that drain-away resolve, produce panic, and bring about collapse.Indeed, he asserts, in doing so ‘the Mongols operated inside adversary observationorientation-decision-actionloops’ 43 .The loss of flexibility: Napoleon and his interpreters. In contrast, Boyd findsfundamental faults in the whole way of waging war in the 19 th century. It is the beginning ofthe costly and wasteful attrition style of warfare that characterized World War I and thestrategic mindset ever since in the West, with some exceptions that Boyd does not fail tohighlight. Within the Napoleonic campaigns he discerns a shift in approach from the flexibleto the rigid, from the unpredictable to the stereotype, from maneuver and focus on enemyweakness to set piece battles, which pit strength against strength.And this is remarkable in light of the fact that the French theoreticians, such as deSaxe, Bourcet, Guibert and Du Teil, who were of great influence on Napoleon, stressedseveral of Boyd key themes. According to Boyd these authors emphasized flexible planning‘with several branches, mobility and fluidity of forces, cohesion, dispersion andconcentration’. Furthermore, they stressed operating ‘on a line that threatens alternativeobjectives’. At the tactical level these theorists prescribed ‘to concentrate direct artillery fireon key points to be forced’ 44 .Boyd explains that in the early campaigns Napoleon used the ideas of the theoristsabout variety (as in “unexpected ways”), ambiguity, deception and rapidity in movement, tosurprise and defeat fractions of superior forces. In addition, Boyd also recognized that theseideas are also at home with guerilla warfare for American colonists, Spanish and Russianguerilla’s ‘exploited variety and rapidity associated with environment background (terrain,weather, darkness, etc.) and mobility/fluidity of small bands with harmony of common causeagainst tyranny/injustice as basis to harass, confuse, and contribute toward the defeat of theBritish and the French under Napoleon’ 45 . Here too he addresses the nexus of movement,ambiguity, rapidity, variety, mobility, fluidity on the one hand with their impact on the moralfactor on the other.Boyd shows how Napoleon was handed an inspired army with citizen-soldiers andnew leaders generated by the revolution 46 . This army was organized along self- contained,but mutually supporting units (divisions) and could travel fast by living off the countrysidewithout extensive baggage or supply trains. It could disperse and concentrate faster thanopponents. The general features of Napoleon’s way of employing these were:41 Ibid, p.25.42 Ibid, p.27-28.43 Ibid, p.28.44 Ibid, p.31.45 Ibid.pp.30-31.46 Ibid, pp.33-34 for the following section.189