FROM THE CHEAP SEATS: A Simple Understanding of Military Strategies
Over the last two and a half decades, I’ve had the good fortune to be educated, both formally and informally, about military strategies. Strategy is the most overused and uninformed word bandied about by almost everyone in the Washington D.C. metroplex, so I will attempt to simplify actual strategies used during the conduct of a war. There are many strategies used prior to a conflict, generally implemented to slow progression towards a war, or to make a potential war so costly that it is simply not worth conducting in the first place. A few examples of these pre-war strategies are deterrence, generally used in conjunction with nuclear weapons capabilities, and security cooperation, which is a broad term that can encapsulate everything from a formal military alliance, military training and education exchanges, and foreign military sales. But this essay will concentrate on the four forms of “warfighting” strategies that are most commonly utilized by military professionals over the course of human history.
With that being said, I have to give a shout out to my friend LTC (Ret.) Bob Bateman who wrote a very similar article about seven years ago for Esquire Magazine. Bob and I served together in Afghanistan in 2010–2011, and we have stayed in touch since then. His article is very, very good, and easy to read It’s located here: https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a40096/definitions-of-strategies/#:~:text=There%20Are%20Three%20%28And%20Only%20Three%29%20Types%20of,means%20to%20resist.%20...%204%20Fabian%20Strategy.%20
The first strategy which will be examined is the decapitation strategy, also known as the coup de main. This strategy holds particular importance at the present, as it was the Russian strategy to win in Ukraine during the first 72 hours of the war. The coup de main is interesting because it can be used at all three of the traditional levels of war — the tactical, operational and strategic — and it’s worth showing a few examples.
The tactical coup de main is generally used when there is a significant obstacle that needs to be seized or destroyed. It is critical for these tactical actions to succeed, as they are generally orchestrated in harmony with the execution of the operational plan. Failure to conduct the coup de main properly has very bad effects, like when the combined American, British, Canadian and Polish airborne forces failed to seize and secure the bridges during Operation Market Garden in 1944. The main effort, conducted by the British 30th Armored Corps, was to pass through these bridges on route to achieving a larger operational objective. In the example of Eben Emael, German paratroopers aka Fallschirmjager, which were part of the German Air Force (Luftwaffe) utilized glider to land in and around the fortress of Eben Emael. This was the Belgians largest, most modern and most heavily defended fort, and it’s large cannons and thick concrete were widely seen as undefeatable by conventional military methods. So the Germans landed troops, including specialized demolition engineers, right on top of the fort, quickly seized the initiative and allowed for follow-on light infantry and mechanized forces to penetrate deeply into the Belgian countryside.
At the strategic level, the coup de main is generally conducted by airborne or in modern times, helicopter mobile forces. The objective here is to seize a capital city, capture or destroy the political leadership, and defeat any military resistance within the city. In addition, once this operation has been conducted, usually with the first phase being the capture of an airfield or airport, follow-on forces quickly arrive to reinforce the smaller initial force. The U.S. invasion of Panama in December 1989 was a classic coup de main strategy, with airborne and special operations forces linking up with American light infantry units stationed in the Panama Canal Zone to overthrow and then capture Manuel Noriega.
When it doesn’t go well, you get the Russian invasion of Ukraine when the 76th Guards Air Assault Division was in the air and expected to land at Hostomel Airport in Kyiv but had to re-direct back to Belarus once the initial landing forces were expelled off the airport by the Ukrainians. Again, these are high-risk, high-reward operations, which have to be planned with excruciating detail, and if they go wrong, they literally can force a country into adopting one of the other three military strategies most commonly used.
The second “warfighting” strategy that requires a look is the strategy of annihilation. This strategy is generally preferred due to quickness of the campaign, when it works. The strategy of annihilation looks to target command and control nodes, military and political leadership, and avoid large scale engagements of enemy forces unless it is completely necessary. The most famous recent strategy of annihilation, in my opinion, was the German invasion of France and the Low Countries in 1940. By utilizing this strategy, the Germans not only knocked out Belgian and Dutch military resistance quickly, they also fooled the French and British to commit their best and most modern forces north to defend Belgium and Holland, when in fact this was not the schwerpunkt (the main effort) as that was designated to Guderian’s armored forces travelling through the Ardennes Forest. This strategy requires fast moving operations, shock through the disruption of communications and command nodes, and avoiding main force engagements as much as possible. The British theorist Basil Liddell-Hart calls this “the indirect approach.” It is not always possible to conduct a successful strategy of annihilation however, because the enemy’s will to resist is the objective. If the enemy decides to resist, if the military, political and public morale and will are high, and the enemy is willing to accept casualties, the strategy of annihilation is likely to fail. When this strategy does fail, an entire war can fail, or another alternate strategy has to be adopted, one that requires substantial time and resources.
The third strategy is known as the strategy of attrition. Attritional strategies are very common, and I would say are the most common in history. Attritional strategies are used when it is not feasible to conduct a coup de main or annihilation strategy, or when political leadership decides to inflict a great deal of punishment on the enemy. The most famous use of attritional strategies, utilized by both the Allies and the Triple Entente, was during World War One, especially on the Western and Italian Fronts. The war in the Dolomite Mountains in northern Italy was an utter bloodbath, as there was almost no room for maneuver, supply lines were tenuous at best, and progress was measured in meters rather than kilometers. As the map shows, there were ELEVEN BATTLES OF THE ISONZO over a three year period. The loss of manpower to cold, disease, and battle was immense, especially on the Italian side. The definitive book on this campaign, if one is interested, is titled “The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front” by Mark Thompson. It is not only the definitive book on this campaign, it is also one of my most highly recommended military history books due to it’s scale, scope and research, focusing on why and how the Italians fought like they did in order to achieve some very odd and misplaced strategic objectives. Attritional strategies involve some of the following aspects: political and military will to take casualties, stay invested in the war for a long period of time, willing to accept punishment within the civilian populace (many attritional wars also have lovely side campaigns like strategic bombing of cities and naval blockades, as a couple of examples), and the willingness to keep fighting even with changes in political leadership. Attritional strategies are used in wars of national survival, or facing existential threats as well.
Quick sidebar paragraph: I believe the Russian strategy has shifted from the decapitation strategy to a strategy of attrition against the Ukrainians. New Russian objectives now seem to include destruction of not only Ukrainian military forces in the field, but attacks against civilians, murder and rape, and indiscriminate use of artillery, missile and aerial attacks within cities. The brutality of attritional wars is becoming more visible by the day during this war.
The final strategy is the strategy of exhaustion. Exhaustion strategies are almost always utilized by weaker opponents, non-state forces, or revolutionary forces. There are a number of keys to successful strategies of exhaustion, including avoiding large scale battles, massing of your own forces (if they are massed, they can be seen and destroyed), having unbreakable political and public will, having an excellent sense of time and timing, and being able to maintain some kind of fighting force. The best example of a strategy of exhaustion is the North Vietnamese strategy towards the United States from 1965–1973. As Ho Chi Minh famously stated, “You can kill ten of our men for every one we kill of yours. But even at those odds, you will lose and we will win.” The North Vietnamese took terrible punishment from the South Vietnamese and American forces during this war. In fact, they almost completely lost their main force in the South, the Viet Cong, during the Tet Offensive, but remained on the strategic offensive during the entire war. This was is a great example of two contrasting strategies. The North Vietnamese used a strategy of exhaustion, knowing that the U.S. was spending billions of dollars annually while maintaining over 550,000 troops in Vietnam for a few years. As the war dragged on, the will of the Vietnamese never really faltered, and they were willing to accept immense losses. The U.S. strategy was one of attrition, as the U.S. political leadership was unwilling to invade North Vietnam (it would have likely resulted in the same outcome in any case), and believed the overwhelming military superiority of American forces would inflict such great damage on the North Vietnamese that they would either accept political agreements recognizing South Vietnam as an independent country or they would be unable to replace their losses in manpower and equipment. Obviously, both of those objectives were never achieved.
To summarize, there are very few strategies that are actually used by militaries to achieve their political objectives. Understanding of the operational environment, understanding public will — on both sides of the coin, using the right strategy to achieve those objectives, and understanding what the likely enemy strategy is going to be are all major components that need to be taken into consideration before launching a war. Remember that military strategies should be broken into two major categories; the first being those strategies to avoid or deter war, and the second being how to actually build a “warfighting” strategy that can win. Most public discussion over the media involves the use of the word strategy in ways that are faulty at best and flat out wrong at worst. Caveat emptor.
