Year: 2005
Type: article
Abstract: I t had started so well.The most battle-worthy, best-trained, best-equipped, and best-led army in the world had made a stunning advance in enemy country.It had defeated the enemy army and captured its national capital.By all rules of classical warfare, this should have been the end of it.But the enemy continued to resist.Soon, scattered elements were hitting back hard and the long lines of communication were threatened.Hostile neighboring countries began to see the opportunities. . . .The echoes of Napoleon's campaign of 1812 in Russia still resonate today: they are at the core of our understanding of war, and the relationship between policy, strategy, and operational art. 1 Statesmen and generals have sought to explain this relationship ever since Socrates urged one of his students to go learn the art of war from a famous visiting general, only to hear him report, upon his return, that he had learned "tactics and nothing else." 2 Recent history has merely reminded us of the paradox of the campaign of 1812 in Russia.Indeed, the numerous critiques, opinions, and analyses of the campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq center around one critical question, best posed by Frederick Kagan: "Why has the United States been so successful in recent wars and encountered so much difficulty in securing its political aims after the shooting stopped?" 3 The answer, for some, is political, 4 while others believe it lies with the US "method of warfare," 5 or with "a persistent bifurcation in American strategic thinking."6 Yet US and NATO military doctrine are crystal clear that "wars are successful only when political goals are achieved and these goals endure."7 If doctrine is sound at this level, the problem, if any, then surely lies elsewhere 36 Parameters
Author: Pierre Lessard
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W226414660