February 19, 2007
Some current transformations of strategy, tactics and weapons technology would have
been utterly unimaginable only a few years ago. Still, certain ancient and medieval principles of
warfare
remain entirely valid. The same can surely be said for the more modern ideas of Carl von
Clausewitz, B.H. Liddell Hart and Antione Jomini. Their crucial concepts have long been part of
the curriculum at the U.S. Military Academy and at the War Colleges. They can be ignored now only at very great risk.
For America's current leaders, attention must be paid. This includes an expanded awareness of the unchanging requirements
of vision, national strategy and national survival. Ironically, however, at a moment of
unprecedented national peril, our senior political and military leaders have strayed
far from such an awareness. To correct this loss of direction, they should begin with a close look at Sun-Tzu.
Chinese military thought originated amidst Neolithic village conflicts almost five thousand years ago. But it was Sun-Tzu's THE ART OF WAR, written sometime in the
fifth century BCE, that synthesized a coherent set of principles designed to produce military
victory. At best, the full corpus of Sun-Tzu's works and those of the other great strategists
should be well understood and followed closely by all who currently seek to strengthen our military
posture in the essential global war against terror and radical Islam. Indeed, the timeless Principles of
War
apply even more aptly to today's global conflict than they did to past historic conflicts. As set forth in the annals of military history, these principles are best identified as:
• Objective
• Offensive
• Mass
• Economy of Force
• Maneuver
• Unity of Command
• Security
• Surprise
• Simplicity
The United States now needs to re-evaluate the very meanings of power in world politics and of the associated war principles that seek victory in a warfare that is not prolonged. The principle of “Objective” states – “When undertaking any mission, commanders should have a clear understanding of the expected outcome and its impact.” Today we call it the “endgame.” Following Clausewitz and Sun-Tzu, commanders (to include the Commander-in-Chief and his staff) need to appreciate political ends and to understand how the military conditions they might achieve can contribute to these ends. Another principle, that of the “Offensive,” states that “offensive operations are essential to maintain the freedom of action necessary for success, exploit vulnerabilities and react to rapidly changing situation and unexpected developments.”
America's leaders should begin with Sun-Tzu's principles concerning diplomacy. Political initiatives and agreements may be useful, they will be instructed, but prudent military preparations should never be neglected. The primary objective of every state should be to weaken enemy states (today, states that support terror, e.g. Iran and Syria) without actually engaging in armed combat. This objective links the ideal of "complete victory" to a "strategy for planning offensives." “One who cannot be victorious assumes a defensive posture; one who can be victorious, attacks....Those who excel at defense bury themselves away below the lowest depths of Earth. Those who excel at offense move from above the greatest heights of Heaven."
The principle of “Mass” outlines that commanders at all levels aggregate the effects of combat power in time and space to overwhelm enemies or to gain control of the situation. Time in warfare applies the elements of combat power against multiple targets simultaneously, and space concentrates the effects of different elements of combat power against a single target.
There is another section of the Art Of War that can help the United States. This is Sun-Tzu's repeated emphasis on the "unorthodox" or, as we prefer to call it today, unconventional warfare. We must, from a high-level strategic view, look at this current global war as combating an enemy who fights in a completely unorthodox manner, and we must fight him the very same way, but more cleverly and more effectively. We must use our full military and intellectual arsenal as a super power to bring victory sooner rather than later. And this can be done only with a specific endgame in mind, and with a corollary commitment to victory.
Drawn from the conflation of thought that crystallized as Taoism, the ancient strategist observes: "...in battle, one engages with the orthodox and gains victory through the unorthodox." In an especially complex passage, Sun-Tzu discusses how the orthodox may be used in unorthodox ways, while an orthodox attack may be unorthodox when it is unexpected. Taken seriously by our strategic planners, this passage could represent a subtle tool for strategic and tactical implementation, one that might purposefully exploit an enemy state's particular matrix of military expectations.
For the United States, the "unorthodox" should now be fashioned not only on the battlefield, but also long before the battle. Indeed, to prevent the most dangerous forms of battle, which would be expressions of all-out unconventional warfare, the United States should examine a number of promising new postures. These postures would focus upon a reasoned shift from an image of "orthodox" rationality to one of somewhat "unorthodox" irrationality. This is what the late American nuclear strategist Herman Kahn once called the "rationality of pretended irrationality." For now, every enemy state knows pretty much exactly how the United States will initiate and conduct major military action, and how it will respond to armed attack and armed conflict initiated by others. If, however, the United States did not always signal perfect rationality to its enemies - that is, that it's actions (defensive and offensive) were not always completely measured and predictable - it could significantly enhance both its overall deterrence posture and its capacity to carry out certain preemption options. These same lessons now apply to diplomacy and politics, which are all too often mired in entirely predictable U.S. policies.
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LOUIS RENE BERES was educated at Princeton (Ph.D., 1971) and is author of many books and articles dealing with nuclear strategy and nuclear war. His work is well known to Israeli and American military/intelligence communities.
Paul E.Vallely
MG US Army (Ret)
Radio Talk Show Host “Stand Up America”
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