Ike, Strategy Rant #1

Late Stephen Ambrose, who for a while was considered America's foremost scholar on Eisenhower, not for once commented to the effect that Ike was not necessarily that great of a strategist. These comments, evidently shared by some other American historians, good and bad, all derive from the Caesarist  (or Napoleonic, if one wishes) view of the warfare. American military bias to Napoleon and his campaigns is not surprising, Carl Sandburg in his Abraham Lincoln: The War Years (if my Alzheimer doesn't fail me. If mistaken I will correct the reference later)  wrote about frustration of US West Point-graduates with the fact that they, instead of studying Napoleon campaigns, were forced to study this Russian Suvara (Alexander Suvorov). Indeed, ideas of beautiful maneuvers, lightning strikes or strategies developed by a single brilliant military mind were all good for wars fought using linear tactics and cavalry, with set-piece battles. Yet, even those set piece battles culminated in a slaughter on unprecedented scale during the Battle Of Borodino and, in the end, tore away the mantle of pure strategic genius from Napoleon. Brilliant tactician certainly he was, a strategist? A strategy as a system of (military) measures designed to achieve  political objectives of a war (Clausewitz inspired definition, later adopted by Marxists) was something else completely and, when judged against the result achieved, tactical and operational brilliance means very little when the war is lost. 

By WW II, strategic thought became what we know it today--a function of military power, which, in its turn, encompassed a huge spectrum of national capabilities ranging from industries to public education and culture. Real strategists saw the world in a very different light than Napoleon saw it. Modern armies and navies required now immense industries, massive logistical chains, originating in national centers of industry and agriculture, new weapons such as radio, tanks and combat aviation changed the outlook of the war dramatically and changed the way armies were commanded and controlled. WW II was the first war with a full blown C3ISR complex becoming a decisive factor. To command a massive army group of 800 000 troops simultaneously required more than just ability to conduct brilliant maneuvers or inspire troops with pep-talks on the even of the battle, it required a profound understanding of the mechanisms of such a command and control and that, on a strategic level, that is level of large bodies of troops capable to influence the dynamics of a whole campaign, it meant the ability to harmonize a huge number of political, purely military, human and other factors. By 1939 to have such an ability one had to be extremely well educated not only as a good field officer, one had to have a serious both education and pedigree in (general) staff work. 

The fact that Ike graduated first out of 245 officers in Command And General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, KS, in 1925 should be emphasized together with Ike's serious staff pedigree prior to WW II. Yet, the shtick of many in contemporary (since WW II) US historiography, let alone vast US military history amateur circles, is pointing out that prior to WW II Ike didn't (field) command anything larger than tank battalion. But that immediately raises a question, why then, a number of battalion commanders want to attend General Staff  academies in any serious Armed Forces? It is because they know that these are academies which open the door to the command of a much larger units. How being a superb and experienced staff officer is considered a disadvantage, while, if anything else, it is an imperative for anyone who is to be considered a serious military strategist. One of the examples of such General Staff leap into the cohort of outstanding military leaders is Marshal Vasilevsky, who, and you may have guessed it already, never commanded, before entering in 1938 the world of General Staff, anything larger than regiment. Yet, one of the most outstanding military leaders of WW II emerged back into the full field command during Red Army's operations in East Prussia. All that, after Vasilevsky planned and coordinated such battles as Moscow 1941 counteroffensive, Stalingrad, Kursk and Operation Bagration.  Not too shabby for a staff officer. 

How Eisenhower's staff pedigree could be a disadvantage, as many profess, in the war where strategic inception (Zamysel) required immense planning, hence large staffs, remains a complete mystery to me. How being a star graduate of what amounted to Russian (Soviet) equivalent of General Staff Academy is not a perfect pedigree for command of large complex forces and being a good level strategist is also a mystery to me, when speaking about Ike who has an overwhelming empirical evidence in his favor. Serious wars are not fought without serious plans and Eisenhower sure as hell was a good military planner with a good grasp of what was at stake in WW II. It couldn't have been otherwise, since in many important respects serving under George C. Marshall's command was more than ample evidence of Ike's talents. Illiterate references (in many US sources) to Ike's "administrative", a euphemism for staff officer, talents merely underscore a complete lack of understanding what is involved in serious operational and strategic planning and Ike sure has done more than his share of it. He ended up, finally, the greatest American practitioner of military strategy, which becomes even more evident against the background of many today's general officer mediocrities whose "planning" (in reality promoting their own careers) helped to squander American resources and embroil her in useless and unwinnable wars globally. 

Yet, Ike's first attempt on real strategic planning was both noble and professional. The first thing Ike understood--a fact which is largely downplayed or deliberately ignored in many American sources--was the fact that successful Allied strategy in Europe hinged on Red Army. Compare this view with the view of then Senator Harry Truman: "If we see that Germany is winning we ought to help Russia, and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as possible." The contrast in attitudes and the level of a strategic thinking couldn't be starker, when Ike wrote in his diary in July 1942, after the Second Washington Conference rejected his and Marshall's Operation Sledgehammer Plan, in favor of Torch.  Depressed and dejected Ike wrote that the prize "we seek is to keep 8 million Russian soldiers fighting Germany. Failing to provide help to Russia will constitute one of the gravest mistakes in history" (need precise quote, this one from memory, but almost exact). You can find this entry in same Stephen Ambrose's national bestseller "The Supreme Commander". Ike's prophesy will come true but Cold War ideological realities helped to not only obfuscate but essentially completely reverse the clock work of the early WW II to a such degree that, in the end, real events and strategic discussions between Allies in 1941-42 have been completely overtaken by Hollywood imagery and a mythology which only now, not least thanks to immense academic efforts of Colonel David Glantz and Lt.Colonel Jonathan House, is being penetrated with the actual facts "on the ground".  

To Be Continued...

Lavrov's Missed Message?

On March 23rd, Russia's Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, spoke to  "students" (in Russian they are slushateli--listeners, a title of officers attending such institutions as General Staff Academy), officers of Russian Armed Forces, who continue their study in the Academy Of The General Staff (VAGSH). Lavrov's speech was grand in a tradition of Russian diplomacy of the past two centuries. There was a lot of Count Gorchakov in it.  It was also a very Russian speech. 

Lavrov's definition of (real) power was sharp and, without unnecessary humbleness on my part, the one I wrote about since the start of this blog (in reality much-much earlier):

Of course, it takes more than just the size of a country’s territory for it to be considered “big and strong” in today’s world. There is also the economy, culture, traditions, public ethics and, of course, the ability to ensure one’s own security and the security of the citizens under any circumstances. Recently, the term “soft power” has gained currency. However, this is power as well. In other words, the power factor in its broad sense is still important in international relations. Its role has even increased amid aggravated political, social, and economic contradictions and greater instability in the international political and economic system. We take full account of this fact in our foreign policy planning.

Remember Correlli Barnett's definition? Definitions which real, not self-proclaimed, realists operate with. 

But, within Russia's grand vision of a new global order, which Lavrov so calmly and firmly articulated, was one point which I find to be one of the main pillars on which Russian vision is based and which concisely defines the main global trend. Here it is:

The world is really changing fast. Another “industrial revolution” is unfolding, and a new, more technologically advanced way of life is taking shape.  Uneven development, a wider gap in the wealth of states and nations, and the battle for resources, access to markets, and control over transport arteries are exacerbating differences. Competition is acquiring civilisational dimensions and becoming a rivalry of values and development models.

How many times have we heard before from US "elites" that we all live in a post-industrial society? Well, we don't. We never did, in fact such a preposterous construct, courtesy of all those faux-scholars in economy, does not exist. We live in a full blown industrial world where the only currency which matters are not some balance sheets of some investment bank or brokerage firm, much of them being virtual money, but a sequence of enclosed technological cycles which spreads from extraction of resources to R&D and manufacturing of a final, often very complex, product. But this is not what was an American view of economy for the last decades. Today, we all can observe some of those, rather dramatically bad, results of living in make-believe world. Lavrov, of course, is being too... diplomatic when speaking of "becoming", there is no becoming--the rivalry simply exists and always existed. Today, in the age of internet, it is simply impossible to block and sabotage easily the values which still appeal to a majority of decent people of the "West". We saw which values deindustrialization brings, the values of an office plankton--from a mindless consumerism, lousy work ethics to a totalitarian ideologies of SJWs, ranging from promotion of sexual perversion to a destruction of a family, to mobs of tattooed pot-heads and drug junkies who are good for nothing. We also see what happens to public education in US (and Europe) which is dominated by social indoctrination at the expense of valuable social, scientific and aesthetic skills. We have too many young kids who are ready to talk about global "problems" and can not solve a simple quadratic equation or basic mechanics problem in Physics course. Wait, they do not teach Physics as a separate subject in most public schools in US. These are not "values" which work, they never did, those are "values" of decay and eventual death.

Restoration of an industrial base of any nation can not happen on the foundation, or lack thereof, of a financial capital and "values" it, together with Wall Street, promotes. Yes, one needs money to jump-start re-industrialization but at this stage it is yet to be seen if President Trump will be able to convince nominally American, in reality supranational and not bound by any interests other than own, capital to start to invests in the US. This investing may provide, now desperately needed, arresting impulse to an unfolding American catastrophe whose features, sadly, are becoming clearer and clearer with each passing day. New industrialization is not a panacea but an ultimately necessary condition under which any kind of workable new deal, a new social contract, may be worked out. This contract's pivot will be jobs, normal ones, in manufacturing, with decent pay, with decent safety net. Present system can not provide this. It is obvious that the system doesn't work anymore and it may resort, albeit Trump's presidency so far makes it less likely, to an insane last ditch attempt on "saving" itself--unleashing a major war. I can not see how it can reform. So, the choice for this system is not even a Boolean: it is to die and let new (in reality old) productive forces take its place. If not, US is doomed for steady decline and eventual disintegration--what it means in a nuclear superpower with her citizens armed to the hilt? I do not even want to contemplate. Lavrov, however, offers Russia's vision, and a hopeful one:

It is clear that there simply isn’t any other way except painstaking daily work to achieve the compromises necessary to peacefully overcome the numerous problems in the world. History shows that betting on hegemony and one’s own exceptionalism leads to greater instability and chaos.        

In general, listen to the speech. it is a great one.