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

mentally and tactically in parallel with the technological (r)evolution, resulted in themassacres of the American Civil War (1861-1865), the Austro-Prussian War (1866), theFranco-Prussian War (1870-71), the Boer War (1899-1902), the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905) and of WWI 55 .For Boyd World War I is the highlight of the attritional style of warfare. Here hesees offensives conducted on wide frontages, emphasizing few (rather than many)harmonious yet independent thrust. The advance was maintained in an even way to protectflanks and to provide artillery support as the advance made headway. Reserves were thrownin whenever an attack was held-up, against regions or points of strong resistance. Thedefense was organized in response of this type of operation. It was organized into depth ofsuccessive belts of fortified terrain. Attackers would be stopped and pinned down by massedartillery and machine-gun fire. Any ground that would still be lost would be won backthrough counter attacks. The predictable result was ‘stagnation and enormous attrition sinceadvances were generally made along expected paths of hardened resistance which in turnwere dictated by both the dependence upon railroads and as well as the choice of tactics oftrying to reduce strong points by massed firepower and infantry’ 56 .Boyd thus gave his audience something to think about. First he introduced Sun Tzu(who was relatively unfamiliar in the sixties and seventies for most audiences) and someother practitioners of strategy. These strategists all succeeded not by concentrating largenumbers of forces in an attritional battle, but by movement, speed, surprise, variety andcreating and subsequently attacking weaknesses instead of enemy strengths. Havingdescribed an ideal type he proceeded criticizing the very masters of modern strategic thoughtand practice that have been taught about, and have been hailed, in most war colleges in theWest. In effect what he has done implicitly is delivering a fundamental critique of thetraditional Western style of warfare 57 .After developing this argument, Boyd continued Patterns of Conflict with developingthe argument that during Western Wars in the 20 th century there have been ideas andconcepts that resembled the Eastern style of warfare, and which, an important point, hadproduced astounding success. And, interestingly for he wrote this during the Cold War, henotes that the founding fathers of Communism such as Marx, Lenin and Stalin actually havesome important lessons to teach for they too think along the lines of Sun Tzu.Rediscovering flexibility. According to Boyd the solution to the enduring stalemate in thetrench-warfare during WW I came in the form of infiltration- and guerrilla-tactics. And in55 Ibid. Like Fuller in The Conduct of War, after this slide Boyd makes a brief excursion to Marxistrevolutionary thought, noticing however that at this point in his presentation it is not clear howrevolutionary strategy and guerilla tactics fit in his argument and he tells his audience that this willbecome evident after his discusision of WW I.56 Ibid, p.55.57 Boyd basically followed familiar analysis. Still it seems Boyd was willing to oversimplify here, again,probably due to his acceptance of Liddell Hart’s views but also to get his message across. However, asAzar Gat has recently convincingly argued, and which Michael Howard did before him, there certainlywere genuine efforts, to counter the increased lethality of the battlefield. In focussed studies of recentmilitary history, in evaluations of Clausewitz, through theory formulation and through field practice inparticular the influential French lecturers of the Ecole de Guerre made serious efforts in this erea.However, due to several problems these efforts did not result in real doctrinal changes in the Frencharmy. See Azar Gat, Military Thought: The Nineteenth Century, (1992), in particular chapter 3, and MichaelHoward, ‘The Influence of Clausewitz’, in Clausewitz, On War, (1976). For the German efforts in thisvein, and a similar corrective message, see Antulio J. Echevarria II, After Clausewitz, German MilitaryThinkers Before the Great War (University Press of Kansas, 2000).193