Since 1945, the Western World, particularly the United States, had been nonplussed by the unaccountable staying power of barefoot jungle brigands defying high-priced techno wizardry. Thus, the sight of lines of enemy troops surrendering amidst the scorched debris of demolished convoys instilled a national sense of elation. (Although for most of us the sight of the ailing, shell-shocked remnants of Saddam's expendable hordes evoked compassion as well). Examining the state of the Middle East almost five years later, we see that, for all our justifiable exultation over the performance of our troops in the Gulf, Saddam still squats toad-like over the fate of his hapless pawns and thumbs his nose at U.N. mandates. The immateriality of battles in the once trendy counterinsurgency doctrine had further eroded the conviction that the objective of war is the hold and smash knockout blow. The potency of the war-winning battle pattern stands in sharp contrast to the exasperating, inconclusive rash of internecine fury that has infested the world's trouble spots of late. Since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the mission has "crept" upwards from the relatively simple problem of quelling destabilizing challenges to authority in states friendly to Western democracies. The once unheard-of dilemma for today's international policemen is how to arrest the dissolution of governmental entities (however inadequate) and protect the powerless victims of riotous anarchy. Neither NATO nor the United Nations enforcement apparautus is prepared to take on a "nation-building" mission. They are designed to fight other armies, not secure public order. Nonetheless, it can be anticipated that at some stage in the process of rescuing the victims of mobocracy, the rescuing force will have to confront and check one or the other of the pillaging warlords. The American martial spirit had been in a profound slump from the time the last chopper struggled off the roof of the American Embassy in Saigon in 1975 through the overstated achievement of the Great Drug Bust in Panama in 1989. Since the humiliating bug-out from Vietnam, the reputation of American arms had sunk even lower. Frustrated American couch potatoes shook impotent fists at the mocking TV images of chanting Iranian crowds surrounding the maltreated American hostages in their Embassy dungeon. The counterfeit "victory" in Grenada late in 1983 did little to alleviate he general despondency over American military weakness demonstrated weeks earlier in Lebanon. There, 250 marines had been incinerated in their barracks by treacherous terrorists whom even the powerful guns of the USS New Jersey had failed to deter. Of course the reeling US National Security intelligence apparautus was asleep at the switch. Nobody seemed to consider the effects of a policy shift -- from hindering the slide into barbarous chaos to taking sides in a vicious civil war. This exasperating monotony might explain the appeal of military histor and the popularity of wargaming at the very period in time when one would expect that post-Vietnam depression might dampen all ardor for warlike ventures. Back to Basics: The ABC's of Offensive Warfare In the light of the frustrating string of elusive victories, Desert Storm, for all the wretched misery of the pummeled shell-shocked Iraqi grunts, was touted as THE long sought military cure-all -- decisive battle; at last a clear win for American arms. When had we seen its like before? Asked about historical antecedents for U.S. Central Command's Operation Desert Sabre, Major-General Burton R. Moore, General Schwarzkopf's Chief of Operations, suggested Stonewall Jackson's 1862 Shenandoah Valley Campaign and MacArthur's Inchon landings as applicable prototypes. Students at American military academies and staff colleges will be urged to scrutinize these illustrious forerunners of the Gulf War stratagem as apprentice strategists debate and discuss the derivation of Schwarzkopf's campaign design. The selected examples are not so much battles of "annihilation" in the sense that the enemy forces were pocketed and exterminated as they are situations wherein the opposition was baffled, his cohesion disrupted, and his supply and command base cut off. Whether annihilated or obfuscated, the enemy was presumably destroyed as an effective fighting force. But for how long and to what ultimate effect? True, significant Union forces had to be kept behind to guard the approaches to Washington, and were thus unavailable to McClellan's desultory struggle to march along the Peninsula to Richmond; but within weeks, there was a substantial force of Federals trudging down to the Rappahannock River and the war see-sawed for another three years until the Confederacy was ground down. MacArthur's left hook at Inchon sent X Corps up to the Yalu River border and drew the Chinese across to pummel the UN forces down the 38th Parallel where the war straggled on for another two years to its inconclusive finish. Creasy's typology and review of battles came at a time when the world had been at peace for 40 years with the exception of some punitive expeditions and brushfire wars. These last hardly made a ripple amidst the peaceable pursuits of a prospering British Empire. His criterion for decisiveness was embraced by the proposition that a single engagement secured the outcome of an entire campaign or war. In fact, Creasy extended this to embrace a major change in the course of civilization hanging on the outcome of the critical fifteen battles. To set up and coherently direct a culminating master stroke was Napoleon's eternal goal, and often his achievement. Following in his tracks, the Austrians realized such a result against the Italians at Custozza, the Prussians over the Austrians at Konnigratz and again over the French at Sedan. The Consummate War Plan: Schlieffen's Paradigm While the suggested American Civil War and Korean War campaign triumphs may have inspired the Gulf War scenario, and Napoleon's expansive deployments provided the ideal, the extended envelopment was first championed expressly as a determinant of victory in Germany at the end of the 19th Century. A recent Fort Leavenworth monograph on the evolution of the pathbreaking 1976 edition of FM 100-5 "Operations", reveals that General William DePuy, the primary author of the Army's doctrinal handbook, had modified lessons from the World War Two experience of the Wehrmacht's Panzergrenadier detachments. However, the Leavenworth study does not pursue the ultimate source of the concept and practice of the definitive war-winning thunderclap envisioned by the forward strategy. The unanticipated wide sweep around a seemingly impassable flank epitomizes one of warfare's most sought after and elusive goals. Thanks to the obsession of one man, who happened to be the chief of the Great German General Staff at its pinnacle, this go-for-broke gambit was, in turn, equated with an otherwise little-studied Carthaginian victory over Roman forces at Cannae in 216 B.C. The battle charts in Schwarzkopf's graphic press briefing on Desert Storm's ground phase might easily have been traced by the spectral hand of the legendary Alfred von Schlieffen, an avid student and spiritual heir of Karl von Clausewitz. In fact, Central Command's air planner, Col John Warden, when trying to sell his air blitz concept to Shwartzkopf, touted the Schlieffen Plan as a paradigm. Lest any reader need be reminded, the enigmatic von Schlieffen's reputation is enshrined, for good or ill, with the failed Great Wheel through France, Belgium and the Netherlands. It seems strange that Warden would utilize the grand plan behind "The Wheel that Broke" to convince his ground-pounding superior that his air plan was sound. But we should keep in mind that it was the idealized projection of the concept rather than its ultimate failure that Warden stressed. This was the infamous Plan with which Germany was to commence its two front war against the Triple Entente in August, 1914. Schlieffen's schematic rendering of the ancient battle was transmuted into a Quick Win prototype -- a formula with which to avoid what was to become a protracted war of attrition. While the Schlieffen scheme faltered in the execution however, the 1991 version ran like clockwork. We are not so much concerned with the enactment of the modified Schlieffen Plan itself since the what-ifs of that particular strategic proposal have been discussed ad infinitum. We will instead examine Schlieffen's military thought as it tracks the evolution and application of the modern concept of "decisive battle"or the "battle of annihilation", examining his examples and adding a few of our own. More Decisive Battle Decisive Battle: Introduction Decisive Battle: Mission Creep: Armies Or Gendarmes? Decisive Battle: Mining History for Validation Back to Cry Havoc #13 Table of Contents Back to Cry Havoc List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1996 by David W. Tschanz. 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