"In war, the power to use two fists is an inestimable asset. To feint with one fist and strike with the other yields an advantage, but still greater advantage lies in being able to interchange them -- to convert the feint into the real blow if the opponent uncovers himself."

--Liddell Hart

If you read a history of, say, the Civil War, you may get the impression that most battles are glorified shoving matches. One side, the attacker, seeks to push the enemy off a piece of ground. If the attacker succeeds, the defender tries to push him back out again.

World War I often looked like this. After the initial battles, the Allies and the Germans secured their flanks on the English Channel and the Swiss border, creating a continuous front. For nearly three years, attacks consisted of one of these armies rushing across no man's land under murderous fires, attempting to push the opponent out of his earthworks. If the attack proved successful (and few did), the evicted forces would counterattack the same way, attempting to regain their lost terrain. These deadly shoving matches produced no decisive results. The war merely dragged on. The Korean War by 1952, long after the brilliance of Inchon, evolved into much the same thing with forces retaking the same ground time and again, producing only casualties.

The frustration with this kind of carnage was well expressed by F. Scott Fitzgerald's character in Tender Is the Night, who revisited the Somme years after the war. "See that little stream-we could walk to it . . . a whole empire walking very slowly, dying in front and pushing forward behind. And another empire walked very slowly backward a few inches a day, leaving the dead like a million bloody rugs."' 

A NEW ORDER

Modern tactics is different. It is based not on pushing the enemy, but on trapping him. In early 1917, the Germans realized that they could not hope to sustain the staggering casualties of trench warfare much longer. They would run out of soldiers long before the Allied powers did. Their solution to this problem was to employ a defense in depth, consisting of many strong points rather than lines, all supported by a strong counterattack force. The idea was to allow the Allies to deeply penetrate and then cut off the penetrating forces. This trapping tactic proved very successful. It allowed the Germans to fight through 1917 and into late 1918. [3]

Why do we want to trap the enemy instead of just push him? Because a pushing contest is seldom decisive. The side that is pushed out comes back the next day, still full of fight. You have to fight him again and again and again. In Vietnam, most of our battles were pushing battles. We were always able to push the enemy off the ground he held and to inflict casualties on him. However, he just withdrew to regroup, replaced his losses, and came back to fight us again. The result was an endless war.

However, if you can trap your enemy, you can win decisively. One prime example from Vietnam of trapping the enemy is Operation Dewey Canyon.

During early January 1969, North Vietnamese activity along the Laotian-South Vietnamese border increased dramatically. Large convoys, including armored vehicles, regularly traveled from Laos into South Vietnam. Colonel Robert H. Barrow and his 9th Marines responded with Operation Dewey Canyon.

The three battalions of the regiment crossed the Da Krong River on February 11th and 12th. The Third and First Battalions moved south-southeast through the mountainous terrain toward Laos. Second Battalion, to the west, swung south-southwest, turning east astride the Vietnam-Laos border. The North Vietnamese forces moving along Route 922 from Laos into the A Shau Valley were trapped between the three battalions. They were mauled. For every Marine killed, the North Vietnamese lost a dozen. Their equipment losses were staggering. More importantly, Dewey Canyon destroyed a North Vietnamese base area and disrupted their logistics to the point of pre-empting their spring offensive in I Corps . [4]

Battles like this are decisive. The enemy force engaged is gone, vanished; it cannot return to fight you again. Most of history's decisive battles have been trapping actions, from Marathon to Stalingrad. Therefore, your goal in tactics is always to put the enemy in a trap. What are some ways you can do this? 

PINCERS

One way is to trap the enemy in pincers. You are familiar with pincers in the form of a nutcracker. Alone, each arm of the nutcracker can only push, but when the two arms are joined, they become a trap. The nut, which is damaged not at all by being pushed around, is crushed between the arms of a nutcracker.

Consider the case of an enemy rifleman shooting at you from behind a tree. If you fire at him only from the front, he is protected by the tree. If you go around him and start firing from his rear, he can simply go to the other side of the tree and still have the same degree of protection. However, if there are two of you and one fires at the enemy rifleman from the front while the other fires at him from the rear, you have put him in a pincer. If he faces toward the front, he exposes his unprotected back. If he faces toward the rear, he exposes his back to your buddy. He remains vulnerable no matter what he does. The arms of the nutcracker, equal in strength, have him.

Good tactics work like a nutcracker. They crush the enemy between two or more different actions that become your pincers. For example, you can use fire and movement; the fire causes the enemy to seek cover, but while covered he cannot respond effectively to your movement. Or, you can put pressure on the enemy's front while attacking into one or both of his flanks; he cannot respond to all your actions at once. You may seek to cut off your enemy and encircle him; this adds psychological to physical pressure. Many of history's decisive battles illustrate some form of pincer tactics. Leuctra is a good example.

In 371 B.C., two opposing Greek forces assembled near the city of Thebes at Leuctra. Ten thousand Spartans under King Cleombrotus I were organized into a phalanx - a mass of troops eight ranks deep. In phalanx tactics, two phalanxes advanced on and collided with one another. Usually, not much happened; battles were normally indecisive.

At the opposite end of the field, 6,000 Thebans under Epaminondas prepared for battle. Greatly outnumbered, Epaminondas realized the futility of throwing his small force against the Spartan phalanx. Contrary to the rules of his day, Epaminondas organized his forces unevenly, placing the bulk of his heavy infantry on his left, 48 ranks deep. His remaining forces formed thin ranks to his right and center. These were echeloned to his right rear.

Epaminondas initiated the attack by immediately charging with his weighted left while his center and right advanced slowly. Aside from being hopelessly confused by this original tactic, the eight-rank Spartan phalanx could not withstand the massed Theban attack on their right. The Spartan right collapsed. Epaminondas then wheeled against the exposed Spartan flank just as his center and right joined the battle. Facing Thebans on their flank and front (a pincer), the Spartans fled, leaving 2,000 dead on the field.

A good modern small-unit example comes from the experience of a French company in the opening days of World War I. As the Frenchmen moved up a small draw, groups of German riflemen infiltrated among the trees above them on either side. The Germans formed a horseshoe around the advancing Frenchmen and opened fire. The French lieutenant forced his men into a skirmish line and attacked into the ambushers; however, the farther they advanced, the more they exposed themselves to German crossfire. Although the French soldiers bravely returned fire, the crossfire proved overwhelming and their ranks broke. The attack became a rout. In this case, the fire from two directions provided the pincers, the arms of the nutcracker. [5]

Pincer tactics also play in aviation. It is a common technique in air-to-air combat. Upon detecting enemy aircraft, a flight of fighters splits into two or more elements beyond air-to-air missile range. The idea is to approach the enemy aircraft from as many directions as possible, not only from the flanks but at varying altitudes. No matter how he moves --dives, climbs, turns, or twists in a combination of moves -- he is exposed.

The pincer is one way of trapping the enemy, but the nutcracker concept can be carried further. It has been one of the central concepts of modern tactics: combined arms.

COMBINED ARMS

Modern tactics are combined arms tactics; on that, virtually every modern military is in agreement. What is meant by combined arms?

The Marine Corps is the only truly integrated air-ground logistic team in the world. The MAGTF is often called a combined arms team. From the Marine Corps' standpoint, a combined arms team means one that has all the elements necessary for sustained combat and noncombat operations: combat, combat support, and combat service support. Combined arms in this context means combining all these assets to fight on the battlefield.

There is, however, another definition of combined arms which is fundamental to maneuver warfare. It is the idea of posing the enemy not just with a problem, but with a dilemma -- a no-win situation. You combine your supporting arms, organic fires, and maneuver in such a way that the action which the enemy takes to avoid one threat makes him more vulnerable to another. [6]

Suppose an enemy fired at you from a fighting hole. Firing at him from two directions might force him to take cover in the bottom of his hole where he would be safe. If, however, you drove him to ground with rifle fire and then dropped a hand grenade in the hole, you face him with a dilemma. He can either get out of his hole, run for safer lodgings, and face the rifle fire; or he can stay in his hole and face the grenade. Either way, he loses. That is what combined arms is all about: giving the enemy equally distasteful choices and trapping him "between a rock and a hard place."

An enemy mechanized column suddenly encounters a hasty minefield. If the enemy commander tries to run through the minefield, he will undoubtedly lose vehicles and men. If he dismounts his infantry to move them around it while the drivers traverse it with empty vehicles, we call in airburst artillery fire. If he waits too long to decide, our oncall aircraft and direct support artillery attack the column. That is combined arms.

SURPRISE

In tactics, not all trapping is based on pincers. If you think about trapping a mouse in your house, you will quickly see another way to trap an enemy: surprise. The mousetrap springs and catches the mouse before it can react to save itself. In military tactics, we do the same thing with an ambush. We pounce upon him with concentrated fires, devastating him before he can react. As discussed earlier, an ambush depends on surprise.

Again, as with pincers, the use of surprise runs all through tactics. Since air-to-air combat began in 1915, between 60 and 80 percent of all planes destroyed in air-to-air combat were shot down by someone they never saw.

Surprise is also possible in logistics. How? On more than one occasion, one side in a conflict launched an unexpected offensive based on a logistics surprise. Their opponent had calculated that an attack was impossible for logistics reasons; the enemy simply could not have enough supplies to launch an attack because its supply lines were being bombed or otherwise attacked or because of the weather or terrain. Nevertheless, the attacker had, with great secrecy, built up sufficient supplies. Its logisticians surprised the enemy.

One such instance of logistical surprise was at Dien Bien Phu, a French outpost in northwest Vietnam. Contrary to French expectations, the Viet Minh moved hundreds of artillery pieces into the surrounding mountains. The Vietnamese did the impossible by dismantling the field pieces and manpacking them through the jungle and up the mountains. The French were caught unawares. The Vietnamese quickly put all the French artillery out of commission and eventually overran the French garrison.

Whether used in ground combat, air combat, or logistical preparation for combat, traps often depend on surprise. Surprise takes the enemy unawares. This raises the question, How do you take the enemy unawares?

UNCERTAINTY AND DECEPTION

There are two basic answers: uncertainty and deception. Both are central elements in modern tactics because both are central to the art of trapping the enemy.

Uncertainty is a central characteristic of war. FMFM 1, Warfighting, says of it:

All actions in war take place in an atmosphere of uncertainty-the fog of war. Uncertainty pervades battle in the form of unknowns about the enemy, about the environment, and even about the friendly situation. [7]

In tactics, the challenge is to use this uncertainty to trap the enemy.

A common way to use uncertainty in tactics is to lead the enemy to try to cover all the bases because he is uncertain where your attack will come. The result is that he is weak everywhere -including where you actually attack. Insurgent or hit-and-run tactics are a good example of this. By striking hard but randomly, a relatively small force can often tie up a much larger force. Such was the case with Confederate Colonel John Mosby and his raiders. By remaining amorphous and unpredictable, Mosby's raiders kept several divisions of Union troops out of battle.

Sometimes, you can generate useful uncertainty through secrecy. More often you create it through ambiguity. It is usually difficult to conceal all your movements from your enemy, but you can confuse him as to the meaning of what he sees. That, in turn, sets him up to be surprised. A good example was Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in August 1990. The Iraqi build-up along the border adjacent to Kuwait was observed and widely reported. Through diplomacy, the Iraqis kept its meaning ambiguous. Most observers thought it was intended to put pressure on Kuwait to yield in negotiations that were then taking place. When Iraq actually invaded, it achieved virtually total surprise. Kuwait's army was trapped in its garrisons.

Ambiguity was central to the tactics of the World War II German blitzkrieg. An attack in blitzkrieg involved multiple thrusts with reinforcements following whichever thrusts were most successful. The multitude of thrusts created paralyzing uncertainty in the opponent because he could not determine which constituted the real attack. (Of course, with flexible reinforcement of success, all of them were potentially real.) There was nothing secret about the German attack, but it was ambiguous on a massive scale.

Sometimes, secrecy or (more commonly) ambiguity goes beyond creating uncertainty and results in deception. A deceived enemy is not uncertain; he is certain, but wrong. The German attack on France in 1940 is a good example. The French were certain the main German attack would come through Holland and northern Belgium. When instead the Germans made their main effort through the Ardennes, the French could not react effectively. They had been certain, but wrong. [8]

In 1973, the Israelis were similarly deceived by the Egyptians who used ambiguity to generate deception. The Egyptians had repeatedly maneuvered in ways that suggested an attack. Egypt's President Anwar Sadat said over and over that he would attack and did not, to the point where it became something of a joke. When finally the Egyptians really meant it, the Israelis dismissed the warning signs as yet another maneuver or bluff. They were certain Egypt would not attack. They were wrong. [9]

SUMMARY

Pincers, surprise, uncertainty, deception, integration of all assets to create combined arms - all have the same purpose in tactics: trapping the enemy in such a way that he has no escape. That is how you fight and win decisive engagements and battles. The success of Operation Desert Storm attests to the effectiveness of these principles. Just pushing the enemy around usually accomplishes little, and pushing tactics rightly belong largely to history. Marine Corps tactics -- maneuver tactics -- demand more than that. They demand that Marines, in every fight, strive to achieve a decision. Almost always, that means catching the enemy in some kind of trap.