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More stuff on how to fight a war, this being a guide to how to figure out where and when to start the shooting.
All right, you’ve got your army. You’ve got your generals and your tanks. You’ve raided Uncle Louie’s gun closet and gotten your guns. You’ve even scrounged around in the couch and the backseat of your car looking for loose change to pay for it. You’re ready for war. Now it’s time to get things started, right?
Wrong.
Sun Tzu claimed that the essence of war was to know both yourself and the enemy. Without an enemy, it’s damn hard to have a war (you can technically fight yourself if you really want to, but this is not recommended). Your enemy may decide not to cooperate with your plans. This is alright. You should decide not to cooperate with his. But first you have to figure out what his plans are.
First you need intelligence. You need to know who your enemy is, what they have to fight you with, and how they intend to fight you. The first thing you should do is buy a satellite TV subscription that gets both BBC World and CNN.
No, seriously. CNN has 4,000 news employees in 37 bureaus (BBC numbers are a bit harder to track). The CIA is only supposed to have between 15,000 and 30,000 people. Between the two of them, the big news networks generally have some grasp of what’s going on in every country on Earth. It’s not always an accurate glance, or even a very good one, but they do give you a picture of the general political position in any country you wish to know about.
Then you need specific information. Most countries have newspapers that you can have delivered outside the country, and their own news portals. Those news portals are usually bad, for instance xinhua.net is one of the most atrocious news sites in terms of partisanism (close to Pravda), but it gives you a good idea of what your would-be opponent wants you to think. It will not, however, include any accurate military information.
There are three ways to get information about an enemy’s military abilities:
1) Build a large intelligence agency similar to the United States’s CIA, and gather the information yourself.
2) Implant a spy into the CIA, or arouse sympathy in nations such as the US, so that they give you the information you desire.
3) Go here and drop US $1,120 for the full internet subscription to Jane’s Defense Weekly.
Generally, first world countries go with option number 1, oil-rich countries opt for option number 2, and most third world countries go with option number 4, that is, getting the Yes-men that you pay to tell you what you want to hear. I suggest option number 3 because not only does it tend to be cheaper and more accurate, but it also has pretty color pictures and advertisements (I’ve never gotten the magazine, but my university did, and I remember staring at an add for a Chevy Suburban equipped with a pop-up, joystick controlled .50 caliber machine gun and wondering who looks at a magazine and then buys this crap).
Now that you know, to embarrassing detail, your opponent’s military capabilities, it’s time to figure out what kind of war you want to have. There are generally two sides to a war, the attacker and the defender. Usually, the one who decides to have a war gets to be the attacker, and the defender gets taken along for the ride. The defender gets a home-turf advantage that is often rather substantial, but the attacker gets the advantage of having all the fighting take place somewhere else and destroy someone else’s infrastructure.
The Attacker generally has three options:
1) Raid
A raid is exactly what it sounds like, and it’s what Israel is doing in Lebanon right now. An armed force enters another country, fights the other guy, and then goes home without claiming any territory. The goal of a raid could be plunder (witness the Hundred Years’ War), destroying an enemy’s military power (what Israel is trying to do in Gaza), destroying their infrastructure (Sherman in Georgia), or even just causing damage and inflicting casualties (almost anything in Africa). A raid is the simplest operation, easy targets, easy glory, and home before the leaves fall. As long as the urge to try and conquer ground doesn’t overcome you, you should do all right.
2) Occupation
This is what the US has in Iraq. In an occupation you are intending to defeat an enemy force and then occupy their land without totally assimilating them. This can be a bit problematic because the locals don’t really like to be occupied. This is what the US ended up doing by accident in Vietnam and Beirut, and now has bogged down into in Iraq. Temporary by nature, an occupation depends a lot upon working with the natives, who may hate you. This is not a recommended form of war.
3) Conquest
Like an occupation, except the attacker intends to stay. Military forces build up bases and begin the subjugation of the enemy population. There is a theory of war that says that conquests are no longer possible due to the proliferation of deadly weapons and the development of guerilla warfare. However, conquests are still part of modern war. China conquered Tibet and the Russians appear well on track to conquering Chechnya. You can either choose to conquer with overwhelming military and economic strength (the Chinese), with alliances and garrisoning (the Romans), or settlement of your own loyals (how the US wiped out the Plains Indians).
The defender, confronted by whatever the attacker tries to do, gets his choice of ways to respond.
1) Conventional
Armies clashing in the field of battle, tournaments between brightly armored knights, English football matches, the conventional defense, one army smacking into another, is the most traditional response. It limits damage done to the defending nation, maximizes damage to the attacker, but stands the chance of being utterly lost and dooming the defender. The Russians chose a conventional defense in World War II and beat the Germans, the South did the same in the US Civil War and lost. Once you lose in the field with this, you have precious little left to fight with elsewhere.
2) Head for the Hills
This is the solution the Europeans developed to beat the Vikings. Build a bunch of forts, and hide in them when trouble threatens. This works very well against raids because there is very little to raid, and raiding armies tend not to bring heavy siege trains with them. A fortified position promises massive losses for any attacker, but it effectively robs the defender of their mobility, making them easy to surround. A conquering army can simply surround them and conquer the lands that these forts are supposed to protect. The Franks might have beaten the Vikings, but the Chechnyan positions in Grozny and the Iraqi positions in Baghdad did not hold out.
3) Guerilla War
A guerilla war is certainly the most popular way to fight these days, but it also has some of the largest handicaps. It depends on the support of a large fraction of the population, a supplier of military arms, a hostile force that is not integrated into the countryside, and time. A guerilla army is mostly a defensive force, they lose their support if they stray into land on which they are not supported, and they can never assault strong positions. A guerilla defense also has to let the enemy control most of the population – which can be bad if the enemy is genocidal. Nevertheless it is very hard, time-consuming, and expensive to occupy or conquer a country defended by a guerilla army. Guerillas also cannot win wars, sooner or later they have to come out and fight in the open. Guerilla fighters in Vietnam and Afghanistan wore down the world’s superpowers. But who remembers the Apache or the Shining Path?
You have to make sure that what you do is matched to what your enemy decides to do. If your enemy decides to raid you, a guerilla defense, in which you keep out of the way of the enemy, is only going to let him fulfill all his goals. At the same time, it would be suicidal to conduct a stand-up, drag-out, knock-down brawl between yourself and a superior force, even if they were only raiding. And a larger army can simply surround and besiege all your strong points.
This is where you have to make a choice, and you can be wrong, and screw it up, and everyone can die. Most often this is based on political considerations, not military ones, but you have to know when you choose how to fight, that you will have a damn hard time changing your plan in the middle of a war. Are you attacking or defending? Do you have a chance of winning in the field or do you have to take some other approach. Can you outlast your enemy? How are their supplies?
All this should give you an idea of how you should fight your war. Then it’s time to decide what your real plan is going to be.
All right, you’ve got your army. You’ve got your generals and your tanks. You’ve raided Uncle Louie’s gun closet and gotten your guns. You’ve even scrounged around in the couch and the backseat of your car looking for loose change to pay for it. You’re ready for war. Now it’s time to get things started, right?
Wrong.
Sun Tzu claimed that the essence of war was to know both yourself and the enemy. Without an enemy, it’s damn hard to have a war (you can technically fight yourself if you really want to, but this is not recommended). Your enemy may decide not to cooperate with your plans. This is alright. You should decide not to cooperate with his. But first you have to figure out what his plans are.
First you need intelligence. You need to know who your enemy is, what they have to fight you with, and how they intend to fight you. The first thing you should do is buy a satellite TV subscription that gets both BBC World and CNN.
No, seriously. CNN has 4,000 news employees in 37 bureaus (BBC numbers are a bit harder to track). The CIA is only supposed to have between 15,000 and 30,000 people. Between the two of them, the big news networks generally have some grasp of what’s going on in every country on Earth. It’s not always an accurate glance, or even a very good one, but they do give you a picture of the general political position in any country you wish to know about.
Then you need specific information. Most countries have newspapers that you can have delivered outside the country, and their own news portals. Those news portals are usually bad, for instance xinhua.net is one of the most atrocious news sites in terms of partisanism (close to Pravda), but it gives you a good idea of what your would-be opponent wants you to think. It will not, however, include any accurate military information.
There are three ways to get information about an enemy’s military abilities:
1) Build a large intelligence agency similar to the United States’s CIA, and gather the information yourself.
2) Implant a spy into the CIA, or arouse sympathy in nations such as the US, so that they give you the information you desire.
3) Go here and drop US $1,120 for the full internet subscription to Jane’s Defense Weekly.
Generally, first world countries go with option number 1, oil-rich countries opt for option number 2, and most third world countries go with option number 4, that is, getting the Yes-men that you pay to tell you what you want to hear. I suggest option number 3 because not only does it tend to be cheaper and more accurate, but it also has pretty color pictures and advertisements (I’ve never gotten the magazine, but my university did, and I remember staring at an add for a Chevy Suburban equipped with a pop-up, joystick controlled .50 caliber machine gun and wondering who looks at a magazine and then buys this crap).
Now that you know, to embarrassing detail, your opponent’s military capabilities, it’s time to figure out what kind of war you want to have. There are generally two sides to a war, the attacker and the defender. Usually, the one who decides to have a war gets to be the attacker, and the defender gets taken along for the ride. The defender gets a home-turf advantage that is often rather substantial, but the attacker gets the advantage of having all the fighting take place somewhere else and destroy someone else’s infrastructure.
The Attacker generally has three options:
1) Raid
A raid is exactly what it sounds like, and it’s what Israel is doing in Lebanon right now. An armed force enters another country, fights the other guy, and then goes home without claiming any territory. The goal of a raid could be plunder (witness the Hundred Years’ War), destroying an enemy’s military power (what Israel is trying to do in Gaza), destroying their infrastructure (Sherman in Georgia), or even just causing damage and inflicting casualties (almost anything in Africa). A raid is the simplest operation, easy targets, easy glory, and home before the leaves fall. As long as the urge to try and conquer ground doesn’t overcome you, you should do all right.
2) Occupation
This is what the US has in Iraq. In an occupation you are intending to defeat an enemy force and then occupy their land without totally assimilating them. This can be a bit problematic because the locals don’t really like to be occupied. This is what the US ended up doing by accident in Vietnam and Beirut, and now has bogged down into in Iraq. Temporary by nature, an occupation depends a lot upon working with the natives, who may hate you. This is not a recommended form of war.
3) Conquest
Like an occupation, except the attacker intends to stay. Military forces build up bases and begin the subjugation of the enemy population. There is a theory of war that says that conquests are no longer possible due to the proliferation of deadly weapons and the development of guerilla warfare. However, conquests are still part of modern war. China conquered Tibet and the Russians appear well on track to conquering Chechnya. You can either choose to conquer with overwhelming military and economic strength (the Chinese), with alliances and garrisoning (the Romans), or settlement of your own loyals (how the US wiped out the Plains Indians).
The defender, confronted by whatever the attacker tries to do, gets his choice of ways to respond.
1) Conventional
Armies clashing in the field of battle, tournaments between brightly armored knights, English football matches, the conventional defense, one army smacking into another, is the most traditional response. It limits damage done to the defending nation, maximizes damage to the attacker, but stands the chance of being utterly lost and dooming the defender. The Russians chose a conventional defense in World War II and beat the Germans, the South did the same in the US Civil War and lost. Once you lose in the field with this, you have precious little left to fight with elsewhere.
2) Head for the Hills
This is the solution the Europeans developed to beat the Vikings. Build a bunch of forts, and hide in them when trouble threatens. This works very well against raids because there is very little to raid, and raiding armies tend not to bring heavy siege trains with them. A fortified position promises massive losses for any attacker, but it effectively robs the defender of their mobility, making them easy to surround. A conquering army can simply surround them and conquer the lands that these forts are supposed to protect. The Franks might have beaten the Vikings, but the Chechnyan positions in Grozny and the Iraqi positions in Baghdad did not hold out.
3) Guerilla War
A guerilla war is certainly the most popular way to fight these days, but it also has some of the largest handicaps. It depends on the support of a large fraction of the population, a supplier of military arms, a hostile force that is not integrated into the countryside, and time. A guerilla army is mostly a defensive force, they lose their support if they stray into land on which they are not supported, and they can never assault strong positions. A guerilla defense also has to let the enemy control most of the population – which can be bad if the enemy is genocidal. Nevertheless it is very hard, time-consuming, and expensive to occupy or conquer a country defended by a guerilla army. Guerillas also cannot win wars, sooner or later they have to come out and fight in the open. Guerilla fighters in Vietnam and Afghanistan wore down the world’s superpowers. But who remembers the Apache or the Shining Path?
You have to make sure that what you do is matched to what your enemy decides to do. If your enemy decides to raid you, a guerilla defense, in which you keep out of the way of the enemy, is only going to let him fulfill all his goals. At the same time, it would be suicidal to conduct a stand-up, drag-out, knock-down brawl between yourself and a superior force, even if they were only raiding. And a larger army can simply surround and besiege all your strong points.
This is where you have to make a choice, and you can be wrong, and screw it up, and everyone can die. Most often this is based on political considerations, not military ones, but you have to know when you choose how to fight, that you will have a damn hard time changing your plan in the middle of a war. Are you attacking or defending? Do you have a chance of winning in the field or do you have to take some other approach. Can you outlast your enemy? How are their supplies?
All this should give you an idea of how you should fight your war. Then it’s time to decide what your real plan is going to be.
no subject
I'm enjoying this very much. You raised an interesting thought for me in regards to the Bush Whitehouse. Do you think they've ever heard of Sun Tzu, much less read The Art of War? While I'm certain that the heads of the U. S. military have, that doesn't mean that the politicos have. And one would think that this:"This is not a recommended form of war." re: Occupation is something that the U.S. should have learned from Vietnam.
no subject
I don't think Bush reads, and I don't think either Cheney nor Rumsfeld would read anything by a Red.
no subject
:D I'll grant the point about Bush, but Cheney? Good corporate warlord that he is, he probably keeps a copy under his pillow.