Summary: We cannot escape history. It offers lessons to guide us. It’s deployed as propaganda to mislead us. Successful strategy requires distinguishing between the two. Our long war, so far a series of defeats, provides examples of both. We can do better in the future if only we’d pay attention.
“As we shall show, defense is a stronger form of fighting than attack. … I am convinced that the superiority of the defensive (if rightly understood) is very great, far greater than appears at first sight.”
— Clausewitz’s On War, Book 1, Chapter 1.
Contents
- The Cult of the Offense Returns.
- The allure of a losing strategy.
- Learning from the Revolution.
- For More Information.
- Clausewitz gets the last word.
(1) The Cult of the Offense Returns
A reader brought to my attention Nothing Less than Victory: Decisive Wars and the Lessons of History
Lewis advocates unceasing belligerence to our foes, always attacking. It’s a commonplace in history, often leading to ruin. It’s become the geopolitical strategy of American neoconservatives, ignoring lessons from American history about the frequent superiority of defense over offense.
“De l’audace, encore de l’audace, toujours de l’audace et la Patrie sera sauvée!” (Audacity, more audacity, always audacity and the Fatherland will be saved!)
— George Danton in a speech to the Assembly of France on 2 September 1792. He was the first President of the Committee of Public Safety. The radical Jacobins on the Committee took his advice, sent him to the guillotine for “leniency” to the enemies of the Revolution, and audaciously soaked the Revolution in blood — wrecking it.
(2) The allure of a losing strategy
The Confederacy had a nearly ideal defensive position. Of sufficient size vs. the North to make its conquest quite difficult, a poor transportation system (few roads and railroads) making attack difficult, with formidable natural defenses (the Appalachian mountains and the Mississippi providing north-south barriers, and its numerous east-west rivers). While their industrial plant was small, with imports it was sufficient to adequately supply their armies.
Most important, time was their greatest ally. Support in the North for the war was always marginal, with time likely to erode it unless fueled by battlefield victories. What the South lacked was a strong commander willing to exploit these advantages. Instead they had Robert E. Lee. This excerpt from Alan T. Nolan’s Lee Considered: General Robert E. Lee and Civil War History
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When compared to the defensive, Lee’s offensive grand strategy, because of the losses entailed, led inexorably, to use his words, to the “natural military consequences of the enemy’s numerical superiority,” that is, surrender. That superiority was enhanced by Federal reinforcements, but it was also heightened by Lee’s heavy and irreplaceable losses.
The grand strategy of defense would have muted these “natural military consequences” because it would have slowed the increase in the enemy’s numerical superiority insofar as that numerical superiority arose from Lee’s heavy and disproportionate losses.
Further, because of the strategic and tactical advantages of the defense, that numerical superiority would have been less significant had Lee assumed the defensive in 1862-63. Lee proved this when massively outnumbered on the defensive in 1864-65. In 1864, Lee’s defense, in Porter Alexander’s words, exacted “a price in blood” that significantly threatened “the enthusiasm of [the North’s] population.” Adopted earlier, this defensive policy might have worn the North out. The grand strategy of the defense was therefore not only a feasible alternative; it was also more likely to have led to victory.
The views of historians who have recently examined Lee’s generalship are worth consulting. … The distinguished military historian, Frank E. Vandiver [said} … at Gettysburg Lee “failed to accept reality. . . . He simply wanted to go on and attack because he wanted to attack.” Grady McWhiney discussed Lee’s preoccupation with the offensive
“From the outset of the South’s struggle for independence. Lee suggested offensives to President Jefferson Davis and urged other generals to be aggressive. … though Lee was at his best on defense, he adopted defensive tactics only after attrition had deprived him of the power to attack. … The aggressiveness of Robert E. Lee, the greatest Yankee killer of all time, cost the Confederacy dearly. His average losses in his first six big battles were 6% greater than his opponents’ losses …”
… In sum, Lee’s “kind of war,” the grand strategy of the offensive, contradicted the South’s true grand strategy. It therefore contributed to the loss of the Lost Cause. … Douglas Southall Freeman, Lee’s unquestioning and devoted biographer {said] “The army’s hard-won battles left its ranks depleted, its command shattered by death or wounds, its personnel exhausted, its horses scarcely able to walk, its transportation broken down, its ammunition and its commissary low.”
… These conditions were not inevitable. They did not fall from the sky. They were in significant part the consequences of Lee’s “devotion to the offensive” and his “daring.”
… These, then, are the martial qualities of the Lee of tradition: devotion to the offensive, daring, combativeness, audacity, eagerness to attack, taking the initiative. Whether these qualities were wise or unwise, well considered or ill considered, assets or liabilities, would seem to depend on one’s criterion. If one covets the haunting romance of the Lost Cause, then the inflicting of casualties on the enemy, tactical victory in great battles, and audacity are enough.
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(3) Learning from the Revolution
The folly of the Confederacy’s strategy becomes more easily seen by comparison with the American Revolution. Like the Confederacy, the Founders faced a stronger power, relying on formidable natural defenses and their foe’s uncertain resolution — with time their greatest ally.
George Washington adopted the opposite strategy to that of General Lee, and led the Founders to victory. See this excerpt from Colonel George A. Bruce’s The Strategy of the Civil War (1918), from Gary W. Gallagher’s Lee, The Soldier
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{On 1 June 1862} Lee assumed command of the Army of Northern Virginia and remained with it until the surrender at Appomattox. He supplemented the {general war policy} with the principle of aggressive warfare which was congenial to his impulsive nature.
In the short period of one year and seven days he fought six of the greatest battles of the war. In history there is no record that equals it. In this short time there had fallen, killed and wounded, of his men 82,208, not counting losses in skirmishes, minor engagements, and the hardships of forced marches and exposure, which would probably swell these figures to a full 100,000; the Union loss, figured in the same way, during the same period, was 74,720.
If the people of the North were weak, volatile, lacking in purpose and resolution, he might well expect that, after such quick and powerful demonstrations, with trembling knees we would come suing for peace and ready to acknowledge the South their independence. On no other supposition were his methods justifiable.
… Of the 7 great battles fought in the Eastern zone including the Wilderness, only one was fought by the Army of the Potomac offensively during an offensive campaign, and one, Antietam, to repel an invasion. The Wilderness was partly offensive on each side, the last battle of the kind begun by Lee.
The logic of their methods of warfare had resulted so near a bankruptcy of men that henceforth Lee was compelled, against his instincts and nature, to resort to the defensive with the aid of breastworks.
In Virginia, Lee is compared to Washington and placed on an equal pedestal. There is some but only slight grounds for such comparison. In character each was high and equally noble. Washington was gifted with a far higher and broader intelligence. If the art of war consists in using the forces of a nation in a way to secure the end for which it is waged, and not in a succession of great battles that tend to defeat it, then Washington, though commanding a much smaller army, as a soldier reaches a higher plane than Lee.
With his broad intelligence and unrivalled judgment he looked at the war as a whole, estimated correctly all the advantages and disadvantages on either side, what would be the relative strength of forces, and adopted a method of warfare, generally defensive, but sometimes offensive when the chances were enough in his favor. In strategy he never made a mistake. He had courage to do and dare, and, what is more rare, the courage to refrain from doing and suffer criticism when doing would injure the cause in his keeping.
He had a correct insight into the minds of his own people and that of the enemy, the strength of resolution of each to endure heavy burdens, looking forward with certainty to the time when the public sentiment of England, led by Chatham and Burke, would be ready to acknowledge the Colonies as an independent nation. With these views he carried on the war for seven years, all the way from Boston to Yorktown, on a generally defensive plan, the only one pointing to the final goal of independence.
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(4) Conclusion
Our situation vs. Islamic jihadists differs from both that of the Founders and the Confederacy. Not only do we have the great natural defense of distance but we’re by far the stronger power. We have no need to attack. Also, time is our ally. No society can escape or resist the forces of modernity, and they’re on our side…
- We are the attackers in the Clash of Civilizations. We’re winning.
- Handicapping the clash of civilizations: bet on the West to win big.
Worse, an offensive strategy is quite daft. Since Mao brought 4GW to maturity after WWII foreign armies almost always lose to local insurgents. Our attacks strengthen our foes.
We can can wait for our foes to self-destruct. As al Qaeda in Iraq did, angering the Sunni Arabs so that they cooperated with us to eject them. As the Islamic State is doing now with its insane violence. We venture much by unnecessarily attacking, especially with the odds against us.
Perhaps we should ask our war mongerers what they gain from our wars, since we pay so much in exchange for so little.
(5) For More Information
If you liked this post, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. See all posts about grand strategy, about war mongerers, and especially these…
- William Lind’s “Strategic Defense Initiative” from the American Conservative, 22 November 2004.
- America’s grand strategy: lessons from our past.
- The US Army brings us back to the future, returning to WWI’s “cult of the offense”.
- How America can survive and even prosper in the 21st Century.
(6) Clausewitz gets the last word
From Clausewitz’s On War
That the defender by inferiority of force and other circumstances may be tied down to that degree we do not dispute. But there is no doubt that this, which should be only the consequence of a necessity, has often been assumed to be the consequence of that part which every defender has to play. Thus in a truly absurd way it has become an axiom that defensive battles should really be confined to warding off attacks and not directed to the destruction of the enemy.
We hold this to be one of the most harmful errors, a real confusion between the form and the thing itself, and we maintain unreservedly that in the form of war which we call defense, the victory is not only more probable but may also attain the same magnitude and efficacy as in the attack, and that this may be the case not only in the total result of all the engagements which constitute a campaign, but also in any particular battle, if the necessary degree of force and energy is not wanting.
