Air University Review , September-October 1980
Major John Hasek
IT WAS Clemenceau who first dropped that old chestnut about war being too serious to be entrusted to the generals. I would counter that planning for future wars is too serious to be left to civilians. On a global scale Western leadership has been lacking a military input into the formulation of its strategies, and I believe this is one of the main reasons why we now have to fear the decade of the eighties as one of the most dangerous periods for our civilization. Had there been sophisticated military thought in American policies; had the overwhelming, balanced military and naval capability that the Allies possessed at the end of the war not been replaced by reliance on the technological gimmickry of the nuclear weapon and on theories such as the 39 steps of Herman Kahn; had there been a true appreciation of the relative strengths of the two power blocs and of the Russians' inability to project power over distance; and had there not been such an irrational fear of the Red Peril, the Cold War and all that has followed might never have happened.
Today it is different. The military might of the U.S.S.R is very real. But even today, is not one of the reasons for the fear we have of the Russians the fact that their strategic thinking has enough military input to project a war-winning image whereas Western security planning usually lacks one of the most important principles of war, the spirit of offensive action?
In a microcosm of this problem, I shall attempt to indicate what happens to a nation's defense capabilities when its forces have been shaped by allied strategies and by diplomatic, economic, commercial, moral, and managerial factors without the filter of a military philosophy.
TRADITIONALLY, in peacetime, the English-speaking democracies have regarded their professional soldiers merely as caretakers of the skills and machinery of war who would train or fight in minor emergencies but not be tasked with thinking outside the boundaries of their technical expertise. In wartime, magically, they would not only fight but also have to produce the willpower and strategies to win.
In Imperial Britain strategy followed trade, commercial interests dictated colonial policies, and the army was mainly an agent for the furthering of such policies. It was the Royal Navy that was the bulwark of Britain's defense for most of the Imperial period. Before World War I, the small professional army was co-opted into the strategies of the French by Major General Henry Hughes Wilson. Then, in war, it expanded so that eventually the British Empire lost the flower of an entire generation in the trenches of France and Belgium. Partly as a result of this, military strategic thought began to develop in Britain between the wars, even though its best-known proponent, Liddell Hart, had to leave the army to continue work in the field. After World War II; the United States, from its superpower status, inevitably led in formulating the strategies of the West. And in the higher reaches of such American strategies, the military component of war was marked by its absence. Strategic thinking was left to academicians, private think tanks, and politically appointed civilians. It may be argued that it was the lack of comprehensive military strategies in the Western alliance that took France out of NATO and brought about General Charles de Gaulle's independent strategies, for there was no État Major,
no general staff in the traditional sense that understood the use of military force. Paradoxically, one of the main reasons against the formation of a general staff in all the English-speaking armies was the fear of the return of the spirit of that rank amateur soldier, Oliver Cromwell-a fear of the military takeover. This lack of military sophistication results not only in dangerous oversimplifications and misunderstandings of war but also in the danger of a split between a society and its army, making it possible for a nation to be defeated without a shot being fired.
Canada has never had Canadian military strategy as such. Our military strategic thinking was taken piecemeal first from the British, then from the United States or from NATO. It may overstate the case to argue that if we had had Canadian strategies we may not have participated in either of the two world wars or in Korea; or we may have done so in a more modest manner befitting our size and remoteness from the conflict (as Brazil did in World War II) and had better returns and smaller casualties for our efforts. Canadian losses in World War I and World War II were out of all proportion to the size of our population and direct danger to our country. (It is perhaps not a coincidence that small countries with a long history of independence and a strong military ethic have retained such independence and not sacrificed their youth in great wars. Sweden? Switzerland?)
In the First World War, Canada's major contribution was in the infantry, which had the greatest need for raw manpower and the largest casualties. In World War II the greatest proportional losses of our best young men were among the aircrews of Bomber Command. Yet, while in World War I we did not have any say in planning even at the army headquarters of Field Marshal Douglas Haig, during the Second World War our highest tactical air force grouping was a bomber group and our input into Bomber Command planning nonexistent. During both world wars our headquarters in Ottawa was merely an administrative control point in the supply of men and materiel. In World War I Prime Minister Sir Robert Borden got his military advice directly from a field commander, Sir Arthur Currie. During World War II Prime Minister William Lyon MacKenzie King obtained his military counsel mainly from the occult, with both his late mother and a pet Irish terrier acting in an advisory capacity.
Because the strategies of our allies did not necessarily reflect the will of all influential segments of the Canadian population, we experienced massive conscription crises toward the end of both world wars. These crises strained the fabric of the state to near breaking point and left indelible marks on the national psyche. After both wars, we solved, or rather hid, these problems by returning to a small, all-volunteer military force. The idea that large numbers of young men would sometime have to fight for their country again became unthinkable. After World War II this sublimation was further reinforced by the concept of the slam-bang nuclear war, over and done with before the needs of manpower for the forces became a problem.
IT IS now 35 years since our last conscription crisis and more than 30 years since our million men in uniform melted down to some 30,000 immediately after the war. The country has accepted as normal the fact that defense is just one more service provided by the federal government and that the citizen's sole duty is the paying of taxes. On the surface this has served us satisfactorily. An all-volunteer force composed of longserving professionals is in many ways the most comfortable defense option. As long as you pay, you have an army; your training establishments can shrink because you do not have to train large new entries; your professionals become most expert and show up well in all competitions and comparisons with other more traditional armies; and leadership and motivation problems are reduced to a minimum. As long as the pay allowances remain competitive and a segment of society or an area of the country has underemployment, troublesome men are simply discharged and new "employees" are hired. In war, of course, this easy solution is no solution; large numbers of replacements must be trained, and the discharging of badly led and badly motivated men is impossible. The problems eventually become apparent, even in peacetime.
The key to all other problems lies in the officer corps and its place in society. If an officer corps is concerned only with the techniques and technicalities of war and does not have a major input into military strategic planning, then strategies that are adopted are those of our allies altered by national interests of trade, diplomacy, politics, and morality. Such strategies do not fulfill their primary purpose, the security of the nation's future. Defense planning also loses the central thread of continuity because the defense forces lack a collective memory and brain. Such continuity can only be provided by a general staff, which acts in the nature of a military super think tank and whose main function is to provide the military input into national strategic planning. In a democratic society, it absorbs the latest developments and mutations of the civilian society and from them shapes military strategies and ensures that the military remains an integral part of the society it serves. Individual members of such a staff must be educated in most nonmilitary disciplines. This is an obvious requirement for technical staffs; it is less obvious but even more crucial with the soft sciences dealing with individual and group behavior. The uniting discipline for all members of such a staff must be the military art--the general staff officer must be a soldier first. Examples of how such bodies work can be found among both allies and adversaries.
Our officers do not get introduced to strategy until they attend staff college, almost halfway through their careers, and then it is treated more as an academic subject with no thought that they should participate in strategic formulation. My own interest in strategy came as a result of my service with the International Commission of Control and Supervision in Vietnam in 1973 with the stimulus more from the realm of tactics than strategy. While I was part of the commission, attempting to supervise the so-called ceasefire, I came to suspect that one of the least studied but most used methods of conflict resolution is the manipulation of information to effect perceptual differences between a democratic society and the army that serves it. This point was driven home for me by the fact that I, an infantry officer with some sixteen years commissioned service, could have had such a gross misperception of what had actually happened in Vietnam. Although I was eventually able to form a more accurate appreciation, because of my past experience, because of the possibility for some freedom of movement in Vietnam, and because of the ability to communicate on a professional level with other soldiers, I realized that there was, by then, no way for the American public to know what had actually happened in Southeast Asia. Inevitably the war that had been won militarily at enormous psychological cost was lost politically in the United States.
The separation, the estrangement, of an army from its society is a tactic that is viable in any conflict situation. The traditional methods of calculating the odds as to the respective strengths of the opponents become almost irrelevant. By this means of conflict resolution, small groups of men can beat large groups, small nations beat large nations, and barbarians with clubs beat sophisticates with tanks and missiles. The ultimate means to prevent such an alienation from taking place is to strengthen the unity between an army and its society by making as many citizens as possible soldiers for at least some time during their lives: by a short period of regular service, by periodic fulltime training, by reserve training-there are many ways. The more disparate the national fabric, the more complete such melding of the state and the army needs to be in order to
ensure the nation's survival. (The polyglot nations of Switzerland, Yugoslavia, and even U.S.S.R have methods by which a majority of male citizens get army experience.)
Short of this political reordering of the state, there are other means of preventing the exploitations of schisms between society and the army. A quick, simple defense has been adopted by the British Army as a result of operations in Northern Ireland. (It may be noted that after the so-called "bloody Sunday" incident, no matter what has happened in Northern Ireland the British Army has not been perceived as the villain in the piece, they have not been made ineffectual, and their morale has not dropped.) The key element of this winning tactic is the instantaneous communication to the public of events as they happen and as they are perceived by the combat commander on the spot. For if the society which orders the fighting believes in the war it has ordered its army to fight, it must also share in the knowledge of what it takes to win; there are of course no absolutes, and clandestine operations must be handled differently, but again clandestine operations are quite unlikely to be shown on national radio and television as they are taking place. In order to do this, the British Army has placed its public relations on the command net of responsibilities. While the army retains professional public relations officers to manage the infrastructure of the system, the responsibility for informing the press covering an operation of what is going on is given to the combat commanders. They are instructed in the techniques of media communication, but the interpretation of events is left to them because they already know the aim and are the best people to interpret actions in light of this aim.
On a different level but very much analogous to the tactical situation is the problem of formulating military strategies in light of national aims. If the opinion-makers of a society are not an integral part of the strategy-formulating process, then the military strategies worked out in isolation will not fit into the overall national aims or more likely will be inoperable in the maintenance of such aims. Second, even if such strategies are, by chance, correct, they will not be supported by the national will if they are not properly understood. It is therefore of paramount importance that military strategic thinking not only be carried out in conjunction with the rest of the strategic community but also in close communication with the makers and samplers of public opinion and the national will. Examples of this feedback method of strategy formulation can be seen more and more frequently. The French army has employed it with great success and sophistication for some time.
ALONG with many others I fear there is danger of major war in the eighties and that the West must be strong enough to prevent such a war from happening. However, even with such a war averted, the attacks aimed at splitting armed forces from their parent societies will, I believe, become more and more frequent. While these conflicts will take place as part of the East/West struggle, they will also be waged on other axes and between other groups regardless of their place in the overall East/West balallce. If a nation is to survive, its army must have a collective memory and brain to formulate military strategies that will support national strategies in furthering national aims.
Department of National Defence
Ottawa, Canada
Contributor
Major John Hasek, The Royal Canadian Regiment (B.A., University of Ottawa; M.A., University of New Brunswick), is serving with the Central Regional Operations Staff in Toronto after a tour of duty as a member of The Skyhawks, the Canadian Forces parachute team. Major Hasek is a graduate of the Royal Military College of Canada, an Honor Foreign Graduate of the U.S. Army Special Forces Officers Course, and a Distinguished Graduate of the Canadian Forces Staff College.
Disclaimer
The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.
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