Being Offensive

[caldrail]

A great deal is said about offensive strategies. We regularly read about blitzkriegs of armoured divisions, outflanking and breaking through in motorised mayhem. There are debates about targeting strategies for bombers, or the effectiveness of ground attack missions that might disable or destroy an enemy's reaction. Sometimes we discuss other means of harming our opponents, by commercial or logistical struggles. It must be said, we also deeply criticise those leaders in the First World War for their wasteful troop charges, or the seemingly pointless static trench lines that barely moved for long periods.

It is in the nature of human beings to focus on offense. Every day, in an instinctual way, we judge each other in terms of aggression and weakness, sometimes without realising. For some, it's a prelude to a decision about violence, or perhaps getting the drop on a business rival. But of course attacking someone in some way carries intrinsic risk, and so we seek allies, people who will co-operate to achieve the objective, whatever it may be, which is of course part of our social behaviour.

Most of us would not normally invite an attack. This means that we have to consider our strategy to avoid aggression. Do we behave submissively to avoid antagonising a potential aggressor? Do we rattle our sabres, beat our chests, or shout back to intimidate our enemy and dissuade him from being aggressive? Or, as humanity has often done in the history of warfare, do we man the barricades, dig trenches, and ultimately, build the impregnable fortress?

The parallels with the natural world must be blindingly obvious. As a species, do we evolve a fast escape mechanism? a fancy threat display? Bigger teeth, claws, and a nastier temper? Or grow a shell the predator cannot bite through?

Defensive strategy is far less studied in military science than offense. We should expect that because defense is often a passive activity rather than one demanding action, and in a primal way, far less attractive to military thinking unless circumstance dictates its necessity. We have learned from millenia of armed conflict that taking the initiative is vital.

Now let's consider a defensive campaign in 1940. The Battle of Britain. Most of us already have some appreciation of what went on in that struggle for air supremacy over southeast England, so a careful analysis and comparison of factors isn't necessary here. What is important is the lessons that those few months of bitter fighting teach us about defense.

In the first place, Britain is an island. The English Channel formed a sort of moat, a barrier to German conquest, and a not inconsiderable one. That was after all why the Luftwaffe were trying to win air supremacy before an invasion of Britain could go ahead. In other defensive measures, we had detection. Air patrols, radar, and the patient alertness of the Observer Corps. All were very important to Britain's defense, but they only provided information. They could only warn us that the enemy was approaching.

The next passive defense were barrage balloons, whose trailing steel cables made flying beneath them a hazardous activity, especially at night when the balloons could not easily be seen. The 'blackout', the dampening of light from urban centers, hid the target. Sometimes phoney lights were deliberately lit to mislead German pilots. Even the anti-aircraft guns, with the potential to wreck an enemy plane, were relatively ineffective. Veterans of the London Blitz recalled how gunners admitted their fire was mostly useless. It did of course help maintain morale.

As always in warfare, half of it is psychology. When attacked, a population need to remain spirited whatever the trials they are put under, or the military defense will eventually lose support. Londoners sang songs lampooning the Germans, or songs that voiced the hope they had of surviving. As much as was possible, ordinary life carried on, and it was this stability in society that was so important in keeping defiance alive.

None of this would win the battle. Note how the most vital factor was the counterattack, the interceptions of German bombers by hard pressed RAF fighters. Offensive action in defense is an important concept we will return to.

Physical barriers have always been present in warfare. Even the warriors of ancient times often learned the benefit of the 'shield wall', or the temporary barricade. Rome made a policy during their imperial period of blocking the routes used by nomadic raiders with stout walls. The medieval nobility often resorted to stone fortifications, visual statements of their status and power, as well as formidable barriers in their own right. But castles are never perfect. Siegecraft emerged even in ancient times to deal with the difficulties of getting through those barriers. Sooner or later a way past would be found. In one siege, the defenders of a city casually remarked to the Roman leader that their siege was pointless - they had enough supplies and water to last ten years. "In that case", The Roman general replied, "We'll defeat you in the eleventh."

This brings us to another aspect of defense. Playing for time, or making the best of what time you have, can be a dominating factor. If you need time to strengthen your defense, then you must in some way to delay the approach of enemy forces. Once he arrives, then your defenses will only last until he finds a way in. Notice again that the issue of counterattack arises - in siegecraft, it isn't just about the besiegers. The defenders must seek to retain or withhold the initiative. They must attack or counteract attempts by the enemy to destroy or undermine their stone walls. The First World War developed an entire genre of underground war as men tunnelled beneath No-Man's Land, fending off enemy diggings or placing explosive charges beneath their trenches. Soldiers might sally forth to raid the camps of the enemy, or wreck their siege engines.

Yet all these measures can only last as long as the defenders have supplies. Ultimately, a defender must decide whether to attack or surrender at the last, for as their supplies run out, they can only choose between the two, or perhaps as the defenders of Masada did, by committing mass suicide rather than face capture by a Roman legion.

Notice the difference in policy during the Cold War. Russian troops faced with ambush habitually took cover and defend their position, whereas NATO forces were trained to counterattack, a policy they regarded as superior in that a proactive attempt to regain initiative was better than letting the enemy pick you off one by one. It is the same principle of reaction once more.

It is of course worth noting that there is a subtle difference between a castle and it's more elongated cousin, the defensive line. Each is an expensive form of construct that whilst intimidating and potentially difficult to break through, requires huge investment and must be manned in times of insecurity. It is an unfortunate part of human psychology we inherit from the natural world that the strongest defense often protects the weakest entity. As we grow stronger defenses, so our need to remain aggressive lessens, and we rely on stout walls more and more, becoming at worst indifferent to potential danger, believing our defenses will prevail. History tells us they won't.

The great problem with elongated defensive lines is that we spread our troops manning them along a wide distance, whereas within the castle they are concentrated. On the other side of the equation, the defensive line means fewer men might be affected directly by enemy action, whilst the defenders of a fort must suffer together. The problem is, when the enemy eventually gets past the wall, the troops manning the defenses are really not where you want them to be, and in all probability, will not react positively, preferring to retain the protection of their defenses. Note that in a lesser sense, the Iraqi's in Kuwait simply sat in their foxholes. Admittedly they were overwhelmed by a highly mobile offensive and lacked proactive coordination, but at the same time, they surrendered in droves, intimdated by alllied attack and the insidious side effects of waiting to be atacked.

Notice that the biological parallel with dinsaurs illustrates the point. Predators hunted animals that either ran away, herded together for protection, or grew hard shells and boney plates. It was still necessary however for some of those herbivores to gain some advantage by adding a means of counterattack. The horns of a triceratops, the heavy mace and tail of an ankylosaurus, or the formidable spikes of a stegodaursus.

It is often quoted that {i]offense is the best form of defense[/i]. Military history agrees. Natural history agrees. But do you?

[Viggen]

..one of the reasons why offensive is more discussed is because you have more control (or at least you think you have), humans i think like to act not react, so indeed a good defense can be extremely important. In your example of the "Battle of Britain", this defense made one thing most of all and that was change the psychology, the atack at first was all cool but eventualy when not much happend strategically the tide turned and even though Britian was at that time at the back foot they gained the psychological upperhand...

 

p.s. even today they say in sports, offense wins battles, defense win championships, so there you have it...

[Onasander]

Sorry for the late reply, a POW from my old unit got traded the other day for some taliban, and it has emotionally knocked the wind out of me.

 

Okay.... your doing good work with this, but instead of trying to synthesize logically the range of meaning of a concept dualisticallt via a spectrum of extremes..... "Offense vs Defense" trying to isolate its functional isolates piecemeal..... something which will exhaust you given the necessity of hysterical questioning and pitiful returns in terms of new insights achieved, I would rather recommend a more consistently mapped out approach by one of the great classical authors, and work it into a "theory of mind" of how human commanders think and rationalize, on a neurological model that take a range of similar dualism from warfare and work them out stategically/operationally into a conscious-unconscious map of warfare..... a psychomachia that is able to map the labyrinth of the mind.

 

A daring and challenging task, but it already has a good beginning. Be careful to consider other cultures writing that avoid a Indo-European or Anglo-Saxon linguistic outlook of expression as well.... youll find many societies lack a conception of "Offense and Defense" in their theory, while by every measure we would empirically observe them as having/doing just that. They thought in a more varied and intrinsic matter.

 

Have of warfare isn't mind, or psychology, and the other half a unspecified other. Its all mind.... we emphasize a real, a concrete, a methodology and a status quo against the active, more nebulous and changing intellectual capacity of man to invent and adapt, to see through..... this is as much a necessity as a bad habit.... and its all too wrong to casually approach war theory as Is vs Ought in application..... the more inventive and adaptive opponent you face wont care. Friction in warfare.... the Clausewitzian kind, arises from a lack of intuition and a unwillingness to explore alternative against the ease of the status quo. War is all mind..... always.

 

Via kindle app (Amazon.com), I strongly recommend.... very strongly recommend, you download "One Hundred Unorthodox Strategies", a Southern Song Dynasty Text that organizes 100 concepts taken from the "Seven Military Classics" into 50 Dualistic couplets..... similar to your "Offense-Defense", with historical illustrations from a battle in history to underline its point concretely within the larger context of warfare.

 

From here, I suggest you do what the Stoics did, and what I in turn am doing to them, and map the logic out via a stratification of the principles onto larger theories of statecraft, and them both into a neurological model of the mind via conscious-unconscious feedback loops. Hard but doable.... hence my attention to Arius Didymus.

 

From the one hundred:

Chapters 67 "Slowness and 68 Quickness deals with aspects of time dilation you described,as well as 63 "The Distant" and "The Nearby". 59 "advancing" and 60 "retreating" would be of component stratification interest to you, in working out larger formulas that point to larger concepts.

 

So would 49 "Security" and 50 "danger", 39 "Initiative" and 40 "response", 43 "the vacuous" and 44 "the substantial", 33 "Contentious Terrain" and 34 "advantageous terrain", 37 "Offense" and 38 "Defense", 23 "Disposition" and "strategic power", 17 "The Host" and "The Guest".

 

Host and Guest relations underline the dichotomy of what constitutes Offense and Defense, as well as inititive and response to the Orthodox (42) and Unorthodox (41). Thats just a beginning to the mass of a formulaic approach to what your metely writing off as Offense and Defense. How can you give a statistical prevalence to offense if your not in a position to objectively differentiate what offense is at root, and how it relates to defense cognitively? Are you not merely stating the attraction of a Ronano-Medieval udeal of the Machismo seeking feats and impressing women?

 

Your statistics quickly fall apart as such: one antagonistic state surrounded by three non-antagonistic states..... three states play defense to one state offensively.... on a very superficial level. However, the antagonistic Prussian like state is likely playing defense too, splitting its forces on a degensive-expeditionary basis, and the three states are likely to form alliances to strike, confuse, stress out and contract the belligerent state. Ultimately, a chicken and egg paradox arises.... was the prussian like belligerent state actually playing defense via aggression all along to keep it from being destroyed by its overwhelming enemies, or vice versa? Alot of other chapters deal with that.

 

Well, I said enough..... just look for formulaic axiomatic principles from world history, and map it on cognitive conscious-unconscious feedback loops. You can use cranial nerves, or 3d geometric shapes.... catholics have mapped out the Stoic 7 deadly sins on cubes with conscious-unconscious feedback loops, I did via the middle gyrus.

 

Easy Peasy, Japanesee. Even Forest Gump could do this.

 

Or... you can continue on, completely missing the point, emphasiving nuances, ignorant of a larger structure. Just remember, Wittgenstein's Language Games.

 

Now..... back to sulking over Bergdahl.

[caldrail]

I have to be honest, I don't have a lot of time for military theory (nor it muust be said, many of the self appointed experts that come out with twaddle). I don't doubt that there's lessons to be learned or that there are better options for any given situation, but at the same time, if you apply a dry military equation you picked up in a book to a real world situation, it's questionable that you understand what was written, what is required, or whther your choice is applicable. Warfare is a form of collective combat and therefore the best commanders are those who are intuitive. Logical, rational solutions are okay provided they work, but so many generals have come unstuck because they applied a set paradigm instead of thinking creatively.

 

In terms of 'offense vs defense', I'm a little perplexed why you say so many factions don't have that sort of concept. It's fundamental, in some form or other, to human psychology.

[Onasander]

The Book I gave you is taken from the seven military classics, which are not exactly dry texts of pure theory..... many come from historic strategists in China, and the historical examples come from canonical works of imperial Chinese history, which itself formed from it.

 

It's dualistic structure, I am guessing, comes from Ying-Yang dualism.... in the west, Platonic Dialectics does as well from a symmetrical dualism.

 

I have little toleration for unscientific works on military strategy..... the writer either needs a background in strategy, or psychology or statecraft, or a form of mathematics like Leschesters War Calculas. I tolerate it in say, the occasional history magazine or a history book for light reading.

 

I also strongly promote classical writers on statecraft and strategy. I support for example, the idea of Virgil reading Arrian in multiple editions. That is a great classical source. I however, would reject the whole of say, Oxford 's history department if they were winging a consensus opinion as a trustworthy fact.

 

Most put on the net is by default this latter, best we can offer in conversations is a link and a wink, or huff and puff. But if you sit down, and start the dialectic process of integrating the information in terms of  the intellect, taking works from diverse eras and looking for similarities, and compare it to what is known about neurological studies on how people think, you can be a little more sure about yourself.

 

It's why I say I don't take any modern historian seriously unless they read Ibn Khaldun. He started the movement to sociology and a modern concept of history. We continue in his steps, and continue to find new, verifiable methods that other historians can check and counter.

 

The Hundred Military Strategies is a awesome work. One of the most important in history. Deng Xiaoping was quoting it in his writings while still in the army in answering questions other generals were asking. I don't become attached to such works without deep reason, it's one of the best Strategy Primers in the Art of War category, internationally and historically. Some of the dual structures not exactly as dualistic as I would like, but most is, and blows Clausewits attempt to change On War out of the water in terms of simplicity and compactness. 

 

In fact, I'm mailing a copy to the commander of my state's national guard..... I don't know if he read it, it's that essential of a text