![]() ![]() Defeating the mass armies of the industrial age had become exceedingly difficult short of finding more efficient, faster, indirect methods of bringing about an enemy's collapse. ![]() There was no single battle that decided the war. Even the much more heavily populous and industralized states of the American Union struggled to defeat the Confederacy, and did so only via flushing out incompetent commanders and replacing them with those directing multiple campaigns spread out over a period of years. Take for instance the American Confederate states. For instance, by the time of the nineteenth century Napoleonic wars and American Civil War it had become near impossible to defeat even a medium sized nation's armed forces in a single battle. With the rise of the nation-state and the industrial revolution however, leading powers became too strong to defeat in such an abbreviated manner. Nevertheless, for much of modern military history strategy largely focused on defeating the enemy in the field, and often in a single campaign. Thus, strategy (in setting the parameters of national decision making) also sets the military aims toward meeting those strategic goals. All of which was done at the expense of and even undermining the larger strategy driving the German war effort (without failing to overlook how genocidally heinous that strategy came to be). Men such as Halder, Rommel, Guderian, and Manstein often ignored the bigger strategic picture and myopically focused on their own theater wide military concerns. It explains much in regards to the failings of leading German officers during the Second World War. This is enormously important to understand. From there, plans have to be made toward capturing or destroying the enemy's center of gravity and winning the struggle outright or so crippling the enemy's ability to effectively continue the struggle, restore the status quo ante, or even come back and defeat the initial victor. This sets the table for determining what is in fact the primary factors underlying a potential enemy's center of gravity. ![]() Hence, strategic objectives range beyond such standard fare as destroying the enemy in the field to goals such as capturing key economic and political centers that will cause an enemy nation-state's collapse. It considers the totality of economic and political matters as well. Strategy goes beyond mere military measures. This is done toward setting the strategic priorities driving operations in all theaters of warfare -which must be approached in an integrated and systemic manner if a country is to accomplish its aims. To that end, diplomatic, economic, and military measures are decided at a national level. In this regard Carl von Clausewitz, two centuries ago in his seminal work On War, most famously proclaimed war as being a continuation of politics with other means. The strategic level of warfare, or strategy, really begins at the political level. But what does that mean? To answer that question let's describe each level of warfare in isolation and then bring them together, starting with the strategic. This vital element of war making was perhaps best described by one of the pioneers in bringing the operational art to life: Soviet military theorist and strategist Alexander Andreyevich Svechin who nearly a century ago wrote, "tactics makes the steps from which operational leaps are assembled strategy points out the path" (quoted from David Glantz's book Soviet Military Operational Art: In Pursuit of Deep Battle). However, in the period between the World Wars a newer concept in military thought fully matured as it's own level of war: the operational art. War fighting has long been dominated by concepts of strategy and tactics. ![]()
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