Monday, July 24, 2023

Some Comments Regarding "Military History for the Modern Strategist, America’s Major Wars Since 1861" by Michael O’Hanlon

 

My longstanding rule as a military historian and student of strategy is to read as widely as possible, from strategists and from generals and even from philosophers, and whenever possible I read histories from both sides of the same conflict. You need to read the good and the bad, in order to sharpen your own mind and define your own thoughts and ideas on strategy by comparing them to the ideas of others.  I know Michael O’Hanlon from his earlier books and from presentations at The Brookings Institute, where we have conversed more than once, I knew I must read this work by him.

In these pages, the author draws upon the history of America’s wars to illustrate strategy.  The book begins in 1861 with the American Civil War.  Further chapters cover World War I, World War 2, the Korean and Vietnamese conflicts in a single chapter, and then the subsequent conflicts in the Middle East in a single chapter.  As I consider the author at least an acquaintance, I was disappointed to find that the published book is not without its flaws.  Some are as simple as typos that should have been caught, for example, a 20__ date is printed rather than the correct 19__ date.  However, there are also sins of omission, suggesting perhaps that the author didn’t read deeply enough.  There are also sins of commission where he placed too much weight on his selected sources.  It must be noted that there is no bibliography, so the only way to know what sources the author used is to read his endnotes closely.   None of these flaws invalidate his points on strategy, but more reading may have added to the depth and breadth of the discussion of strategy in these conflicts.

The American Civil War

Any modern discussion of the commanders in blue and grey must reflect the fact that most officers (the ones who went to West Pont) would have read primarily from Jomini’s Art of War, where the focus is upon Napoleon’s wars, his actions as a commander, and his thoughts and ideas about war as filtered by one of his staff officers.  Clausewitz’s work, On War, wasn’t yet available in English and German would not be taught at West Point for another decade or more.  It is likely that the only Union or Confederate officers familiar with Clausewitz, would have been one of the German émigré officers found in both armies, especially those who had served in their homeland’s army.  It is also important to recognize that calculations made before the war about the relative economic strength of North vs South overlooked the harsh reality that a sizable portion of that Southern wealth was literally the human multitudes held in bondage – and Southern planters would find it hard to translate such a ‘resource’ into hard cash in wartime.

As a slight aside, I believe that I can address the Michael O’Hanlon’s question (echoing Russell Weigley) as to why it took longer to train Civil War soldiers that to train soldiers for the war in Vietnam.  I went through Basic and Advanced Individual Training at Fort Knox in 1972, by which date the US Army had been training draftees for a good two decades.  It had training facilities, training personnel, and manuals on how to do it.  In 1861, the roughly 15,000-man US Army was scattered around the country and had little in the way of centralized training facilities or training personnel.  An added complication was that the vast majority of new regiments created to fight the war were raised by the individual states, which had no training facilities or personnel (unless they could find a West Point, VMI, or the Citadel, etc., graduate to name as Colonel of the new regiment).  However, the Union Army had a 3-volume manual (generically called “Casey’s” after its author) which covered everything the soldier needed to know.  As a Civil War reenactor, we often joked that a brand-new officer would do just fine training his soldiers if he could keep at least a chapter ahead of the troops as he went through the manual.  (The Confederate Army had “Hardee’s” manual.)  My experiences with both training practices also showed me that this initial training primarily resulted in an individual who could stand, sit, march, and generally act like a soldier (including taking care of himself, his weapons, and his other equipment) – but he wasn’t yet a combat soldier.  It would be the job of the regiment or unit in the field to which our new soldier would report to train that soldier into being a combat effective part of the unit.

The First World War

Explaining how the First World War came about is something numerous historians and others have attempted to explain over the following century, each placing special weight where that author thought it belonged.  Such extended examination of how ‘the Great War’ came about are, of course, almost literally the foundation for modern deterrence study.  Here, however, I am concerned that the author in this case may have tried too hard to be evenhanded but then focused in my view on the wrong things.  For example, in discussing Ottoman Turkey’s belated entry into the war as a German ally, he mentions the story of the Germany cruiser Goeben reaching Turkish waters after a long sea chase by the Royal Navy – but he completely failed to note that before the war had broken out, First Sea Lord Winston Churchill infuriated Turkey by seizing for his Royal Navy the two new and nearly completed battleships in British shipyards that were already paid for by Turkey – and offered neither apology or compensation.  The related anger set the stage for the Turkish decision triggered by the Goeben incident.

Similarly, I think too little attention is paid by the author to the British commitment (shared in international agreement with Germany) to Belgian neutrality.  Germany’s brazen and bungling violation of Belgium’s neutrality presented Britain with the decision to either go to war ‘over a piece of paper’ or not.  However, having helped create an international system (especially in Europe) that established the importance of such a ‘piece of paper’ and then helped to maintain that system for a century, Britain had no choice – however poorly it explained its position to Berlin.  Such pieces of paper were of concern to those who wrote and signed them but in Germany these individuals failed to refocus the German General Staff’s attention from the question of ‘can it be done?’ to the real one of ‘should it be done’.

The Second World War

The extensive discussion of the Second World War did include one rather confusing sentence:

“In what became known as the Bataan Death March of early 1942, the American forces that had been garrisoned on the Philippines were isolated, outmaneuvered, and effectively starved into capitulation by a modest-sized but highly effective Japanese invading force.”

It appears that the author is applying the sobriquet of “the Bataan Death March” to the Japanese campaign in the Philippines when it actually refers to the subsequent march by the Japanese of some 76,000 American and Philippines POWs some 65 miles over 5 to 10 days without adequate food or water.  Only 59,000 would survive this march and after the war a Japanese Major General and two Colonels would be tried, convicted, and executed for this.

This thought leads to another observation about how racial prejudice and mistaken preconceptions about other nationalities and races underpinned key bad decisions made by about every combatant nation participating in the Second World War, though this volume primarily calls out Japanese estimates that the US would not fight.

In my view, the author also missed the opportunity to discuss the Allied information war success against Germany, relevant as we follow the ongoing war in Ukraine.  In April 1945, the German garrison in occupied Norway surrendered to the Allies – more than 400,000 of them.  The garrison in Norway was tied down by a prolonged Allied information campaign, enabled by the ability to read German military communications and the control of multiple German agents who had been turned by the Allies, all aimed at convincing Hitler that the Allies were preparing to send troops to liberate Norway.  The 400,000 men in Norway were only a bit fewer than the number who surrendered in Italy at the end of a prolonged campaign begun with the 1943 invasion of the Italian mainland, but which tied down a larger number of Allied troops over almost a full two years.

Korea and Vietnam

It should be noted regarding US participation in the conflict in Korea, that the US did not mobilize in the same way that it had for the Second World War.  This imposed restrictions on what manpower and resources could be sent to Korea even as the US sought to bolster its forces in Europe fearing a Soviet invasion there.  As for Vietnam, it needs to be noted that after 1954 the governments in both Hanoi and Saigon were primarily run by Northern Vietnamese figures.  Also, as Hanoi started preparing for a renewal of armed conflict in South Vietnam, it began by organizing its sympathizers there into the Viet Cong – dominated in its early phases by Southerners who would over time be replaced by people sent down from the North because operations like the Tet Offensive had been so costly for that Southern leadership.  I think also that Richard Nixon’s sabotage of President Johnson’s peace efforts in 1968 needs to at least be referenced in the discussion.

The Mideast Wars

The histories of Desert Shield/Desert Storm, like the various post-Cold War interventions in Somalia, the Balkans, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria are in fact still being written – and rewritten.  This makes it a rather daring and even daunting effort to look to the history of these conflicts for strategic insights.  However, here Michael O’Hanlon is on ground well-known to him as a long-time participant in open (and some more discrete) conversations about these countries, the challenges they represent, US actions in each, and what lessons about strategy might be drawn from these experiences.  I believe what is presented here might be considered a good ‘first draft’ which we can keep at hand as more information and new histories are written about these conflicts and the US’s decisions with regard to each of them.

As I come to the end, I need to remind the reader of my advice at the beginning, read everything.  I look forward to Michael O’Hanlon’s next project.  He has a lot to tell us about strategy and I wish him the best as he continues to look for the historical underpinnings of it!

 

 

Tuesday, January 3, 2023

Welcome to 2023 – There’s Obviously Lots Going On

 

I’ve always said that it is not my intention to burden the followers of this blog (or anyone else!) with an endless stream of new postings just to show I’m busy, I’ve tried to only post when I believe there’s something useful to say.  I have also been spending a lot of time on The Military Philosopher Facebook page with shorter postings and a lot of sharing articles of interest (as well as on my other FB pages).  But the bright and shiny of FB is fading beneath the tarnish and scratches so I’m thinking that this year I will try to share more of my interests here and cut back on my FB time.

Obviously, the Russian invasion of Ukraine remains the biggest ongoing matter of interest.  Pretty much everyone was surprised at the scale of Russian ineptitude and practically awestruck by Ukrainian resistance.  I think the most important point I can offer right now is what I said elsewhere at the very beginning – either Putin has to change his mind about this war, or the Russians will have to change Putin for another leader who can admit failure and cut Russia’s losses.  What happens to Russia after that is anybody’s guess, including the majority of Russians at home and abroad.  I do know that a postwar Ukraine will require major amounts of help and investment, and I fully support integrating them into the EU and NATO if that’s what they want to do.

Otherwise, I will be posting about several of my ongoing projects and some things that in another year might have become lectures, so the content here may roam and range widely.  That said, I’m trying principally to research the American War of Independence in support of the ongoing design of the American Revolution game at the National Security Decision Making Game (found on Facebook).  I am also doing some miniatures painting, currently focusing on Medieval to early Renaissance figures for use with the Fog of War Rules, and may sure some reports on that and related games here.  I have also been working on some solitaire replays of classic Avalon Hill War games to mark the 50th anniversary year of beginning of my career as a war gamer with the purchase of AH’s hex version of Gettysburg (thanks for the gift, Grandma!).  I will probably also return to my series of articles on classic/vintage miniatures war gaming rule sets in an attempt to capture what these rules brought to the general conversation of war game design and play features.     

For today, I’ll just share some observations on my latest reading – the original novel “The Enemy Below” upon which the film of the  same name was based.  The 1957 film has long been a favorite so when I spotted an early paperback copy in a used book sale, I grabbed it and then chose it to be my first book finished in 2023.

The author was Denys Arthur (D. A.) Rayner, DSC + Bar, VRD, RNVR, an actual veteran of the Battle of the Atlantic.  He published the original novel in 1957, as he explains in an Author’s Note, in order to explore a combat situation he had never actually experienced – a one on one contest between one surface escort ship and one enemy submarine.  He presents a tautly told tale in 146 pages in the 1966 reprint paperback I found.  The movie version officially runs at 97 minutes (per my DVD copy). 

The screenplay was written by veteran screenwriter Wendell Mayes, a US Navy veteran though without combat sea service.  Technical advisors for the movie were identified on IMDB.com and the DVD package as Albert Beck, a U-boat veteran, and Commander C. E. Dunston, USNR.

As is often the case when translating a book into a movie, a number of changes were made and some elements and events in the novel were dropped from the screenplay, the most significant being the change from a Royal Navy to a US Navy destroyer thus making the U-Boat commander’s adversary an American instead of a British Captain.  Also Dropped from the film were the chess games played by the destroyer’s captain and the ship’s doctor, though the screenplay also added more byplay and involvement on the part of crewmembers.

The scenario behind this confrontation remains the same – the U-boat is hurrying to rendezvous with a German raider that has in obtained a set of important Royal Navy code books that would enable Germany to easily locate and attack the Allied convoys essential to Britain’s survival in the war.  The requirement to reach the specified time and location for this rendezvous is what keeps the U-boat on a course and heading that allows the destroyer to find it again whenever the two ships lose contact.

There are also some nice dialogue scenes in the movie in which anti-submarine warfare tactics are discussed and the relative strengths and weaknesses of the two ships are noted, which I’m sure was helpful to the audiences of the late 1950s (and even today).  But if you want to have some very interesting reading, head over to the comments section of the IMDB.com entry for The Enemy Below where a number of knowledgeable individuals have offered their evaluations and additions to the discussion featured in the movie!

Bottom line, for me at least, both the book and the movie deliver a taut naval thriller though with much of the feel of the war at sea’s long days and nights waiting for something to happen.  The differences between the movie version and the original book, though, really make me want to see a British studio for a change remake the movie and stay closer to the book!  I’d buy a ticket and a copy of the movie on DVD/Blu-ray! 

 

 

 

Friday, March 11, 2022

Legacy Knowledge versus New Data

 

I am reminded of a quote from Winston Churchill during debate, “I admire the martial and commanding air with which the right honorable gentleman treats the facts.  He stands no nonsense from them.” 

For some time, I have been thinking through a blog post on the unreliability of human perceptions, shaky human reasoning in the arena of war and warfare, and resistance to data-driven analysis over legacy knowledge.   “Legacy Knowledge” in any field usually begins with the stuff “everybody knows” – whether it’s at their mother’s knee, in a classroom, from a mentor, or from their experience, and if they’re smart – from the experience of others.   History is replete with stories of conquering armies that accepted their own status quo for too long, only to be overturned by an upstart foe.  One common element in that acceptance is a tendency to believe the legend.

As Vladimir Putin is now amply demonstrating, decisions about making war are frequently affected by mistaken perceptions regarding threats and miscalculations about the conduct of war.  I have also seen at least one as yet unverified claim that the professional cadre of analysts at the FSB, Russia’s intelligence service, are putting out the word that they predicted this outcome, but Putin and his cronies ignored their warnings.

Some years ago, I went to see a movie called “Moneyball”, based on Michael Lewis’s bestselling book about the impact of data science on baseball.  I finally got around to reading the actual book last year and recognized that this story echoed themes from similar earlier episodes, as well as numerous comments from operational analysts, conflict simulation/war game designers, and systems thinkers about the resistance to their observations from their uniformed services and associated civilian officials.

Previous to “Moneyball”, Steven Johnson wrote “The Ghost Map” about the cholera outbreak in 1854 London and how one persistent maverick physician tracked down its source by the careful collection of information about who was contracting cholera, where, when and looking for the how by systematic study of his data.  His findings were rejected outright and ignored until another outbreak about 10 years later forced the issue.

These stories also bring to mind Thomas S. Kuhn’s “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” (originally published in 1962) which offered insight into how our knowledge of physics advanced as new hypotheses and theories supplanted old ones.  His study of how the scientific ‘establishment’ resisted new theories and new data contributed to a pattern of revolution in science when suddenly the establishment resistance to new thinking was finally swept away.

Kuhn argued that this concept was not applicable to other fields of human endeavor, I and others disagree with him and have found other fields of human activity in which ‘new’ knowledge faces similar challenges in the face of ‘legacy’ knowledge – for example, the ‘revolution in military affairs.’  The common thread linking these stories is the recurring contest in the human mind between ‘legacy knowledge’ and new data-driven ideas.