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

Lawrence wrote Liddell Hart that for irregular warfare, as Lawrence had used it, onecould as easily write war of movement. Lawrence belonged with J.F.C. Fuller and LiddellHart, to those who contributed to the rediscovery of flexibility and maneuver, in otherwords, those who developed an alternative to the disastrous attritionist mindset that reignedfrom Napoleon till the trench warfare of 1914-1918, theorists Boyd would find muchinspiration in, and in their work he discovered much commonality with his own ideas.Brain-warfareThe influence of Fuller and Liddell Hart on Boyd appears throughout A Discourse, both incontent as well as in approach. To begin with on page 11 of Patterns of Conflict Boyd refers toJ.F.C. Fuller’s book The Conduct of War as good starting points for his investigation. TheConduct of War, 1789-1961: A Study of the Impact of the French, Industrial and Russian Revolutions onWar and Its Conduct , as the full title runs, was published in 1961, but was in essence a“refurbished” and undated version of several earlier books 28 . Boyd found inspiration inFuller’s view on military history, virtually adopting large parts of both the structure andcontent of Fuller’s book in the first halve of Patterns of Conflict when Boyd tells the story ofNapoleon and the effects of the Industrial Revolution on warfare.He argued that the Great War was based on a gigantic misconception of the truepurpose of war, which is to enforce the policy of a nation at the least cost to itself an to theenemy and, consequently to the world, for so intricately are the resources of civilized statesinterwoven that to destroy any one country is simultaneously to wound all other nations.Militarily, he wrote, since the Prussian victories of 1866 and 1870 the military doctrines ofEurope had been founded on the two fallacies that policy is best enforced by destruction andthat military perfection is based on numbers of soldiers, and he blames Clausewitz amongothers for this, as would Lawrence and Liddell Hart.Fuller claimed that the military had misunderstood the modern nature of war. In theage of the internal combustion engine human masses had become insignificant incomparison with technological advance and perfection. The physical epoch had come to anend, the moral epoch was dawning. There was no longer a need to literally destroy theenemy’s armies in the field. Aircraft using gas would disable, demoralize and paralyzeunarmored troops, surface ships and civilian populations and infrastructures alike. Armoredforces would paralyze, demoralize and cause the disintegration of armies by striking at theirrear communications and command system. Paralysis and collapse were central themes.Boyd incorporated these view on mobile mechanized warfare, the precursor ofBlitzkrieg, as the German general Heinz Guderian would later acknowledge, and whosebiography (Panzer Leader) Boyd would also read while completing Patterns of Conflict 29 . In The28 Azart Gat (1998), p.33.29 Azar Gat (1998), p.33. Gat cites from Guderian’s work. Interestingly, Fuller drew on SocialDarwinism to develop a theory of military development in history. In Fuller time, Darwin's work wasrevolutionary and it affected the Zeitgeist. Its major influence on society was the Social Darwinistphilosophy, which held that individuals, countries, and whole races evolved through competition andwar, and that only the best adapted to the environment would thrive. What was best, survived; whatsurvived grew more distinct and specialized, and thrived in its environment. The idea of survival of thefittest was actually coined by the philosopher Herbert Spencer, and Darwinism exerted an influence onFuller through him. It was Spencer who made current the term “evolution” rather than the olderpurely biological term “epigenisis” based on his desire to describe a general process that was notlimited to biology. Spencer wrote that war was the prime mechanism of evolution among societies.Those societies that could effectively fight wars survived and flourished while those that could not50