War From the Ground Up (43 page)

23
. Clausewitz,
On War
, Book 2, ch. 2, Howard and Paret, p. 138.

24
. Tacitus,
Histories
, Book 1–39. This phrase is used by Tacitus in the context of plotting during the Roman Civil War of 68 to 69 ACE.

25
. Stathis N. Kalyvas,
The Logic of Violence in Civil War
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006). See in particular ch. 11, ‘Cleavage and Agency', pp. 364–87.

26
. Ibid., p. 364.

27
. Ibid., p. 389.

28
. Ibid., p. 387.

29
. David Loyn,
Butcher and Bolt: Two Hundred Years of Foreign Engagement in Afghanistan
(London: Hutchinson, 2008), p. 89.

30
. Ibid. pp. 143–162.

31
. Ibid. pp. 88–94.

32
. Ibid. p. 121.

33
. Ibid. p. 146.

34
. Ibid. p. 161.

35
. John Masters,
Bugles and a Tiger
, (New York: The Viking Press, 1956), p. 191.

1
. Dr Conrad Crane was the editor of the
Unites States US Marine Corps and US Army Field Manual 3–24
.

2
. I am grateful to Dr Conrad Crane of the US Army War College for these illustrations, from a presentation given by Lieutenant General David Petraeus at Fort Leavenworth in February 2006.

3
. Colonel Joseph Felter, US Army, Royal United Services Institute Conference on Counterinsurgency Tactics, London, 8–9 December 2010.

4
. Admiral J. C. Wylie,
Military Strategy
:
A General Theory of Power Control
(Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1967).

5
. Frederick Spencer Chapman,
The Jungle is Neutral
(London: Chatto and Windus,1949).

6
. Bob Woodward,
Obama's Wars
, ch. 30, p. 350.

7
. House of Commons Defence Committee, Fourth Report,
Operations in Afghanistan
(17 July 2011), pp. Ev 67, Q 295.

8
. David Kilcullen,
Counter-Insurgency in Iraq, Theory and Practice 2007
, PowerPoint presentation, available on the
Small Wars Journal
website, slide 26.

9
. Antonio Giustozzi, ‘Armed Politics and Political Competition in Afghanistan', in Astri Suhrke and Mats Berdal (eds),
The Peace In Between: Post-War Violence and Peacebuilding
(London: Routledge, 2011).

10
. Lieutenant General Sir Graeme Lamb,
Counter-Insurgency Commander's Guidance
, British Army internal unclassified publication (May 2009).

11
. William S. Lind, Colonel Keith Nightengale, Captain John F. Schmitt, Colonel Joseph W. Sutton, and Lieutenant Colonel Gary I. Wilson,
The
Changing Face of War: Into the Fourth Generation
, Marine Corps
Gazette
(October 1989), pp. 22–6; ‘Bin Laden Lieutenant Admits to Sept. 11 and Explains Al-Qa'ida's Combat Doctrine', Middle East Media and Research Institute, Special Dispatch 344 (10 February 2002); cited by Patrick Porter,
Military Orientalism
, p. 63.

12
. Neil Sheehan,
A Bright Shining Lie
(London: Pimlico, 1998; first published by Jonathan Cape 1989), p. 67.

13
. ‘Remembering the Vietnam War, Conversations with Neil Sheehan' (14 November 1988), part of ‘Conversations with History', University of California,
http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/conversations/Sheehan/sheehan-con6.html

14
. Neil Sheehan,
Bright Shining Lie
, p. 317.

15
. Ibid., p. 697.

16
. General Sir Frank Kitson,
Low Intensity Operations: Subversion, Insurgency, Peace-keeping
(London: Faber and Faber, 1971), p. 72. Kitson set out very clearly thirty years ago many of the lessons that have taken the British Army eight years to re-learn in Afghanistan. Kitson advertises as a model the US military, which by 1970 had become in his eyes a highly effective counter-insurgency force in Vietnam; the irony being that this experience was subsequently largely jettisoned by the US military, forcing them to (successfully) re-learn their older lessons in Iraq and Afghanistan. Kitson also criticises the widely held view among army officers on both sides of the Atlantic (of his time, but which is also to be found today) that the army should get back to ‘proper soldiering' (conventional conflict), and that ‘a fit solider with a rifle' can accomplish any task. He points out that this is simply not true. Subversion and counter-insurgency are professional specialisations which any force will struggle to improvise. History repeats itself. (pp. 199–200).

1
. There is an issue of translation here. See Clausewitz,
On War
, Howard and Paret, p. 608 footnote 1.

2
. Clausewitz,
On War
, Book 8, ch. 9, Howard and Paret, p.633.

3
. Samuel Huntington,
The Soldier and the State
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard Belknap Press, 1957).

4
. The historical roots of this idea lie more with Jomini (1779–1869), the Swiss-born theorist of warfare, than with Clausewitz. John Shy in his essay on Jomini argues that it was he who popularised the idea that ‘interference' by strategically naïve political leaders led to military failure. Jomini used the example of Austria, which lost many major campaigns between 1756 and
1815, by comparison with the success of Frederick the Great or Napoleon, who united the political and military in one man. Shy notes that: ‘these difficulties were a central theme of
On War
, but soldiers managed to read even Clausewitz in ways that twisted his meanings back into comfortable formulae'. John Shy, ‘Jomini', in Peter Paret (ed.),
Makers of Modern Strategy
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), p. 161.

5
. Clausewitz,
On War
, Book 8, ch. 6, Howard and Paret, p. 608.

6
. Huntington,
The Soldier and the State
, p. 100.

7
. Ibid., p. 73.

8
. Ibid., p. 74.

9
. Ibid., p. 308. Huntington cites Command and General Staff School,
Principles of Strategy
, pp. 19–20; USNIP, XLVI (1920), pp. 1615–16.

10
. Ibid., pp. 322–5.

11
. Ibid., p. 329.

12
. Ibid., p. 336; Huntington cites
Hearings before the Senate Committee on Military Affairs
on S.84, 79
^th
Cong., 1
^st
Sess. (1945), p. 521.

13
. Ibid., p. 344.

14
. Ibid., p. 456.

15
. Ibid., pp. 465–6.

16
. This conception of strategy can be found in Clausewitz, although in its modern form it is associated with the work of Arthur F. Lykke. See ‘Towards an Understanding of Military Strategy' in the US Army War College
Guide to Strategy
(2001), ch. 13, p. 179.

17
. Harry R. Yarger,
Strategic Theory for the 21
^st
Century: The Little Book on Big Strategy
, US Army War College (February 2006), p. 1.

18
. J. C. Wylie,
Military Strategy
, p. 78.

19
. Clausewitz,
On War
, Book 8, ch. 6B, pp. 606–7.

20
. Ibid., Book 2, ch. 4, p. 152.

21
. Ibid., Book 2, ch.1, p. 128.

22
. Hew Strachan, ‘The Lost Meaning of Strategy',
Survival
, vol. 47, no. 3 (Autumn 2005), p. 35.

23
. Loc. cit.

24
. Harry R. Yarger,
Strategic Theory for the 21
^st
Century: The Little Book on Big Strategy
, p. 12, reproduced with permission of the author.

25
. ‘Military experts, not political amateurs, should decide whether we go to war', Oxford University debate, 2010.
http://www.ox.ac.uk/oxford_debates/past_debates/hilary_2010_war/index.html

26
. International Security and Assistance Force website (ISAF):
http://www.isaf.nato.int/mission.html

27
. See COMISAF's Initial Assessment to the Secretary of Defense (30 August 2009), obtained by the
Washington Post
.
http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/documents/Assessment_Redacted_092109.pdf

28
. Prime Minister Gordon Brown, speech on 13 December 2008.

29
. See for example Adam Holloway MP, ‘In Blood Stepp'd In Too Far: Towards a Realistic Policy for Afghanistan', paper for the Centre for Policy Studies (October 2009), p. 5: He challenges a statement from the British Ministry of Defence in 2009 that ‘our commitment is first and foremost about Britain's national security interest. Put starkly, the choice is between fighting the AQ insurgents in Afghanistan, and fighting them on the streets of UK towns'. Holloway's response is: ‘this statement from the MoD is nonsense. Put starkly, our current situation is working against the West's security interest and is making attacks on the streets of Britain more, not less, likely'.

30
. Woodward,
Obama's Wars
, pp. 271, 239.

31
. NATO OPLAN 10302 (Revise 1), Unclassified version released December 2005, p. 1, paragraph d. See also Lt.Col. Steve Beckman ‘
From Assumption to Expansion: Planning and Executing NATO's First Year in Afghanistan at the Strategic Level
' (Carlisle, PA: US Army War College, 2005).

32
. Ibid., p. 2, paragraph 2.

33
. Ibid., p. A-2, paragraph b.

34
. Adam Holloway MP,
Hansard
vol. 477, Part 112. UK Parliament Westminster Hall Debate, 17 June 2009.

35
. Clausewitz,
On War
, Book 1, ch. 1, p. 77.

36
. Ibid., Book 1, ch. 1, p. 87. Note that Clausewitz used the word
Politik
, which does not differentiate between policy and politics.

37
. Ibid., Book 8, ch. 6B, p. 605.

38
. J. C. Wylie,
Military Strategy
, p. 80.

39
. ‘The aims a belligerent adopts, and the resources he employs, must be governed by the particular characteristics of his own position; but they will also conform to the general spirit of the age and to its general character. Finally, they must always be governed by the general conclusions to be drawn from the nature of war itself'. Clausewitz,
On War
, Book 8, ch. 3, p. 594.

1
. Clausewitz,
On War
, Book 2, ch. 1, Howard and Paret, p. 128.

2
. A doctrinal distinction between centre of gravity and decisive point can also be made.

3
. Ibid., Book 8, ch. 4, p. 596.

4
. ‘War can be a matter of degree. Theory must concede all this; but it has the duty to give priority to the absolute form of war and to make that form a general point of reference, so that he who wants to learn from theory becomes accustomed to keeping that point in view constantly, to measuring all his hopes and fears by it, and to approximating it
when he can
, or
when he must
[italics original]… Without the cautionary examples of the destructive power
of war unleashed, theory would preach to deaf ears. No one would have believed possible what has now been experienced by all'. Clausewitz here is referring to the huge expansion in scale and lethality in war that European states experienced during the Napoleonic Wars. Clausewitz,
On War
, Book 8, ch. 2, Howard and Paret, p. 581.

5
. Ibid., Book 4, ch. 9, p. 248. Clausewitz has been criticised, perhaps legitimately, for advocating methods that stressed, sometimes obsessively, the imperative to seek physical destruction of the enemy. To ignore aspects of Clausewitz that are largely unpalatable today is to be partial. We should not brush over the brutality of aspects of his argument. There is undoubtedly an element of obsession with the destruction of the enemy that one can read in many parts of the work. He states that ‘the price of battle is blood', and that if a general ‘blunts his sword in the name of humanity', eventually somebody would ‘come along with a sharp sword and hack off our arms' (Ibid., Book 4, ch. 11, pp. 259–60). While apparently brutal, Clausewitz does not seem to make a fetish of war's brutality; that was war as he had experienced it. Indeed in some ways he is more honest about war than accounts that keep their distance from actual description of the battlefield. One of the most striking and original parts of
On War
is the short series of chapters at the end of Book 1 which vividly describe actual battlefield experience (Ibid., Book 1, ch. 4,5,6,7, pp. 113–21). While this argument had purchase at the time in which Clausewitz wrote, it would not today, especially in the context of nuclear warfare and a very different ethical and legal environment. Furthermore, one of Clausewitz's intentions was for
On War
to be of practical value to soldiers in war. In that context, he was trying to come to terms with the problem of how to deal with a potential enemy who would use Napoleonic methods. To that end, the last chapter of
On War
is a long description of how to fight a hypothetical war against France. In the context of Europe immediately after the Napoleonic Wars, it would have made sense for Clausewitz in
On War
to have suggested operational methods which had been proven as effective by Napoleon: ‘our conviction that only a great battle can produce a major decision is founded not on an abstract concept of war alone, but also on experience' (Ibid., Book 4, ch. 11, p. 260). Indeed, it was by imitating his methods that his opponents had ultimately defeated Napoleon.

6
. Ibid., Book 4, ch. 11, p. 260.