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

and air power theorists are notably absent from the list. Interestingly, non-Westernapproaches (Soviet strategy and guerrilla warfare) feature prominently. So Boyd deliberatelyexposed himself to a wealth of perspectives, issues, levels of problems and a variety oftheories and analyses. In addition he read various secondary studies on military history.Interestingly he read history backwards; he started with the 20 th Century and ended with SunTzu. This approach highlighted continuity and recurring patterns in stead of radical breaksand revolutionary technical developments.It is simply beyond the scope of this study to make a synopsis of all the major workson strategy Boyd read and show the extent of their influence on Boyd. The rationale of theselection of these authors lies in the close relationship between the ideas contained in theirwork and those of Boyd. One could add Mao Tse Tung or Vo Nguyen Giap and AndréBeaufre. If his larger set of personal papers is taken into account one could also add KarlMarx and Lenin. The strategic concepts embedded in their work however are sufficientlyrepresented in the following survey, and in some cases Boyd incorporates large sections oftext in his presentations that are sufficiently self-explanatory to show what influence theirideas have had on Boyd.Rediscovering flexibility and fluidityTo a certain extent the argument is valid that Boyd offered merely a synthesis of existingtheories, a contemporary one, important and timely regarding the context of the 1970s and1980s, but only a synthesis. Boyd plundered, or alternatively, created a synthesis of militaryhistory and strategic theories. He incorporated well-known historical examples and theoristsin his presentations. In Patterns of Conflict he closely followed the historical developmentJ.F.C. Fuller laid out in The Conduct of War, including Fuller’s less than positive views onClausewitz (which Fuller shared with T.E. Lawrence and Basil Liddell Hart). Boyd showshow European armed forces lost the art of maneuvre warfare in the Napoleonic era anddiscusses the rise and disasters of attritional warfare that occurred in the 19 th Century. In thisof course Boyd found a similarity with the situation of the US armed forces in the aftermathof the Vietnam War.Indeed, Boyd’s work suggests that when it comes to Boyd’s views on combat, hefound inspiration with authors who are united in their focus on achieving a measure ofcontrol over the enemy, on adaptation, on perception, and one achieving destabilizing effectsthroughout the enemy system in stead of the more traditional focus on attritting the enemyin a prolonged head-to-head battle. These authors display a balanced understanding of thecognitive dimension, in concert with the physical, more than those strategists who focusprimarily on the physical aspects of the defeating the enemy in battle.One such author was the British theorist of naval strategy Julian Corbett, who in1911 focussed on limited war 20 . He developed the idea of sea control not through thewholesale destruction of the enemy fleet, but through the exertion of control over themovement of that fleet by maintaining a fine balance betweeen dispersion and concentrationof one’s own fleet, by superior knowledge concerning enemy whereabouts, and by a superiorcapability to concentrate if and where necessary.A similar idea Boyd recognized in T.E. Lawrence’s work who compared the sea withthe desert, the environment of the operations of Arab guerrilla fighters he commandedagainst the Turks during the First World War. Lawrence is noteworthy also for the20 Julian S. Corbett, Some Principles of Maritime Strategy (Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Maryland,1988, originaly published in 1911).48