The History of American Military. Richard W. Stewart
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and warfare have grown more complex, the term strategy has been gradually broadened from its eighteenth century connotation as the “art of the general,” far beyond its original, narrow military meaning. In the nineteenth century, and even more in the twentieth, distinctions began to be blurred between strategy as a purely military phenomenon and national strategy of a broader variety involving a combination of political, economic, technological, and psychological factors, along with the military elements, in the management of national policy. As a result, the term grand strategy (or higher strategy) has come to connote the art of employing all the resources of a nation or coalition of nations to achieve the objects of war (and peace). The broad policy decisions governing the overall conduct of war or its deterrence are the prerogative of the chief of state and his principal advisers. The strategist, whether in the narrower or broader sense, deals in many uncertainties and his art is the calculated risk. At the opposite end of the scale are minor tactics, the term used to describe the maneuver of small units. Falling in between is the concept of operational art that involves the maneuver of large-scale units (divisions and corps) to achieve victory that often has strategic results.
Despite distinctions in theory, strategy, operational art, and tactics cannot always be easily separated in practice. The language of operational maneuver—putting one’s army into the most favorable position to engage the enemy and depriving the enemy of freedom of movement— is also largely the language of tactics. Thus, envelopment is an attack on an enemy’s flank and toward his rear, usually accompanied by an attack on his front. A turning movement is a wide enveloping maneuver, passing around the side of the enemy’s main forces and attacking him from the rear. Double envelopment involves an attack on both flanks of the enemy while his center is held in check. A penetration is an attack on the enemy’s front by driving a wedge into it or piercing it completely. It may be followed by an enveloping attack on one or both flanks. In connection with these four basic forms of attack, two terms are often used: main effort, concentrating on the critical point in the enemy’s position, and secondary effort, pinning down the remainder of the enemy or moving against a secondary objective to obtain an important but less critical result.
Linking strategy, operational art, and tactics and attracting more and more attention is logistics, defined simply as the art of planning and carrying out the movement and maintenance of forces. This field also has been greatly broadened as warfare has expanded and grown more technological and complex. Logistics deals with the deployment of military forces and their equipment to the theater of operations, along with innumerable services, to feed, clothe, supply, transport, and house the troops. The connecting links—the network of railways, waterways, roads, and air routes by which an armed force in the field is reinforced and supplied from its base of operations in the home or friendly area—are the lines of communications. The theater of operations comprises the combat zone as well as the supply and administration area directly connected with military operations.
In modern warfare the major divisions of the military art (strategy, logistics, operational art, and tactics) are closely interdependent. One field merges into the others, and changes in one inevitably lead to changes in the others. Sometimes weapons have appeared on the battlefield before military theory and planning have fully absorbed them, and adjustments throughout the art have been slow to follow. In the Civil War, for example, the widespread use of the rifled musket upset the relation among the combat arms; the range and accuracy of these weapons in the hands of defending infantry shattered the effectiveness of the concentrated attack in which Napoleonic strategy culminated. But, as often has been observed in the history of warfare, armaments and weapons are more readily changed than ideas. Napoleon’s principles continued to be upheld, sometimes with disastrous consequences on the battlefield. An oft-cited case of the appalling repercussions of holding concepts too long or rigidly is the French offensive spirit in World War I that led to massed infantry attacks against entrenched German troops with machine guns.
It is clear that in modern warfare theory and practice have not always been the same. Wars, particularly in the great coalition conflicts of the twentieth century, are not run by rules or theories. Once joined, modern war has had a way of breeding its own strategy, tactics, and weapons. More than ever, for successful commanders, flexibility has become the only sure guide. World War I, beginning as a war of mass offensives, was a classic case of arrested strategy that required new tactics and weapons to dig the war out of the trenches. The Anglo- American strategy against Germany in World War II proved a compromise of the theory of mass and concentration upheld by the U.S. Army and Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s attack on the periphery. Despite attention to principles, Allied strategy in World War II was a hybrid product hammered out largely on the “anvil of necessity.” In war, moreover, military strategy varies with political direction and goals. In this vein, Clausewitz had argued that military strategy must respond to national policy and political aims. Perhaps he best summed up the political context of modern war in his assertion, “War is not merely a political act, but also a real political instrument, a continuation of policy carried out by other means.” “War,” he concluded, “admittedly has its own grammar, but not its own logic.”
The American Military System
To organize for national security, each nation adopts the military system most suited to its culture, needs, and policies. Some nations have traditionally tended to concentrate significant segments of their economy on the maintenance of huge military forces and to determine national policies largely in terms of their military implications. While the United States shares with Europe a legacy of military thought and practice whose roots lie deep in the past, its military system has grown out of its own national experience.
The form of government, the traditions of the people, the nature of the country, and its geographical position in relation to other powers have had a profound influence upon American military institutions. In turn, those institutions reflect the American culture and way of life. Indeed, the Army is essentially an institutional form adapted by American society to meet military requirements. The American military system has been developed to place a minimum burden on the people and give the nation a reasonable defense without sacrificing its fundamental values. From the beginning, the United States has sought to reconcile individual liberty with national security without becoming a nation in arms. The balance is often difficult to achieve.
Chief characteristics of American culture that have a bearing on its military system include the value placed upon human beings as individuals; life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and peace; the desire to achieve decisive results quickly; a talent for the design and use of machinery; highly developed productive capacity and managerial skills; and great material wealth. These characteristics underline the American penchant for absolutes: the sharp distinction between war and peace; the insistence on complete victory; an abhorrence of casualties; and the desire for short, decisive, offensive action in warfare. They help account for the traditional American attitude toward war as an aberration in which the bully who disturbed the peace must be soundly and quickly thrashed so American society can return to normalcy. They also point to the importance of public opinion in a democracy in raising and supporting armed forces and to the reason why wars against disturbers of the peace are apt to take on the character of moral crusades. They help explain the traditional rhythm of sharp expansion of the armed forces in wartime and precipitate contraction after the end of hostilities.
In turn, these characteristics and attitudes have shaped the Army in its organizational relationships and in its philosophy of operations. They account also for such distinctive Army features as the development of great mechanical power, the stress on firepower rather than sheer manpower, and the concentration on quick victory by offensive operations.
Throughout its existence the United States has been compelled to provide for military security. The degree to which the provisions were made has varied with the nature and magnitude of the particular threat. Until technology reduced the distance separating the United States from the Old World, the forces in being could be, and were, small. At the same time the deep-seated American reluctance to devote a large proportion