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171. Military Strategy in War and Peace

Author:
Terry Terriff, James Keeley, and John Ferris
Publication Date:
09-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
Institution:
Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
Abstract:
In recent years, there have been many analyses of warfare from the perspective of the battlefield, a trend initiated by John Keegan in 1976 with his book, The Face of Battle. These studies have focused on the tactical level, with the soldier. However, the tactical approach alone is not enough to explain the results of war.
Topic:
War

172. Military Strategy in War and Peace: Introduction

Author:
David J. Bercuson
Publication Date:
09-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
Institution:
Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
Abstract:
In July of 2010 a small group of historians from the University of Calgary, the United States, and the German Armed Forces gathered for a workshop at the University of Calgary. For a day and a half the participants struggled with the question “what is the impact of strategy on battlefield outcomes?” in a wide variety of historical circumstances from ancient Greece to the 21st Century.
Topic:
War
Political Geography:
United States and Greece

173. Strategy, Strategic Leadership and Strategic Control in Ancient Greece

Author:
Burkhard Meißner
Publication Date:
09-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
Institution:
Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
Abstract:
The purpose of the following paper is to describe the rôle of strategies and strategist in classical and hellenistic Greece: how political and military strategies were decided upon, how far such strategies, once they were conceived of, influenced or governed what actually happened on the battle field, if, how and to what extent strategic control was exercised in battles. In a paper like this describing the rôle of strategy can be achieved only partially, however: We will be looking at a selection of significant examples which show us how institutions for operative and strategic decisions and how strategic thinking developed in Greece.
Political Geography:
Greece

174. The Battle of Tannenberg in 1410: Strategic Interests and Tactical Implementation

Author:
LTC (GS) Dr. Martin Hofbauer
Publication Date:
09-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
Institution:
Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
Abstract:
The Teutonic Order dates back to the time of the Third Crusade (1189-1192). Around 1190, during the siege of Acre in the Holy Land an order of nurses was founded. This order was converted in 1198 into an order of knights, the so-called Teutonic Order. It was confirmed a year later by Pope Innocent III. The Order acquired its first properties in Palestine, Armenia and Cyprus, and from 1200 on also in Germany. Eventually it spread over large parts of Europe. The competition with older orders of knights in the Kingdom of Jerusalem as well as the failed crusades prompted the order to look for a new field of activity.
Political Geography:
Europe, Lithuania, Palestine, Germany, Armenia, and Cyprus

175. Bismarck, Wilhelm II., and German Military Leadership

Author:
Dr. Michael Epkenhans
Publication Date:
09-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
Institution:
Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
Abstract:
At least twice in the history of Imperial Germany, December seems to have been a rather critical month: On 17 December 1887, the ageing German Emperor, Wilhelm I, convened his military entourage at his bed in the castle of Berlin to listen to the reports of his generals about the military situation of the Empire. Under normal circumstances, these reports by Germany's highest-ranking generals, the Chief of Staff and his Quarter Master General, the Prussian Minister of War, and the chief of the Military Cabinet were by no means unusual. Against the background of a political situation which seemed to be deteriorating for several years now, this meeting, however, turned out to be a war-council. For many months the Quarter Master General of the Prussian Army, General v. Waldersee had been pleading for a preventive war against Russia. Germany's eastern neighbour had been quarreling with the nation's most reliable ally, Austria-Hungary, over the Balkans for more than two years now, and according to secret reports about the redeployment of troops on its western border seemed to prepare for a war against the powers of the dual alliance. From a military point of view a solution to this problem seemed urgent, not the least because of the hostile attitude of Germany's western neighbour, France. Waldersee's plea for war was supported by the 87-year-old Chief of the General Staff, Moltke the Elder, and Prince William, whose influence had become ever more important due to his father's fatal illness.
Topic:
War
Political Geography:
Russia, Germany, Hungary, Austria, Berlin, and Prussia

176. Offense, Defence or the Worst of Both Worlds? Soviet Strategy in May-June 1941

Author:
Dr. Alexander Hill
Publication Date:
09-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
Institution:
Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
Abstract:
Getting the strategy right does not guarantee a successful outcome, but all other things being equal it certainly stacks the odds in favour of one. The Soviet Union was strategically prepared for war in June 1941, but poor operational-strategic deployment and operational and tactical failings allowed the Wehrmacht to achieve far more through operational and tactical competence than perhaps need have been the case. Nonetheless, despite poor operational-strategic deployment and operational and tactical inadequacies during Operation Barbarossa, the Red Army was able to survive the summer and autumn of 1941, after which a combination of improvements at the operational and tactical levels and superior resource mobilization stemming to a large extent from strategic planning made German victory increasingly improbable.
Political Geography:
Soviet Union and Germany

177. Thoughts on Grand Strategy and the United States in the Twenty-first Century

Author:
Dr. Williamson Murray
Publication Date:
09-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
Institution:
Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
Abstract:
One might begin an examination of the issues involved in grand strategy with an effort to describe what we mean by the term. Over the centuries, some governments and leaders have attempted to chart a course for their nations that has involved something more than simply reacting to the course of events. In most cases they have confronted sudden and major changes in the international environment, often resulting from the outbreak of great conflicts, but at times involving economic, strategic, or political alterations that threaten the stability or even existence of their polities.
Topic:
Climate Change
Political Geography:
United States

178. Strategic Thinking: The French Case in 1914 ( 1940)

Author:
Dr. Eugenia Kiesling
Publication Date:
09-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
Institution:
Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
Abstract:
A common military history examination question at West Point is "Discuss the proposition that good strategy always beats good tactics." I tell my cadets that if they cannot answer an examination question, they should modify it they can. Behind our eight stimulating "Workshop Questions" lies a world view which I would summarize as follows. Strategy is literally crucial—the crux of war. Military failures, failures of what my friend Wick Murray calls "military effectiveness," usually being at the strategic level—or stem from a failure to integrate strategy with sound policy. Strategic effectiveness requires not only clear and achievable goals but good policy, sound institutions, and political will.
Topic:
War
Political Geography:
Germany

179. The Significance of the Balkans as a Strategic-Operational Area for the Bundeswehr

Author:
Rudolf J. Schlaffer
Publication Date:
09-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
Institution:
Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
Abstract:
I have said: I will not advise Germany to take an active part of any kind in these efforts as long as I cannot see that Germany has any interest in the whole matter that – please excuse the coarseness of expression – would be worth the healthy bones of a single Pomeranian musketeer. What I wanted to express was that we should use the blood of our countrymen more sparingly instead of expending it for an arbitrary policy which no interest forces us to pursue.
Topic:
NATO
Political Geography:
Germany

180. Military Strategy in War and Peace: Some Conclusions

Author:
Holger H. Herwig
Publication Date:
09-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
Institution:
Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
Abstract:
“Everything in war is very simple,” Prussia's premier military theorist, Carl von Clausewitz, famously stated, “but the simplest thing is difficult.” Strategy falls into that description. Almost no other term in military terminology has been so much and so often abused. Even the most fleeting scanning of major journals and newspapers, the briefest listening to national news casts, reveals a horrendous application of the term: the “strategy” of crossing a desert, the “strategy of storming a hill, the “strategy” of pacifying a village, the “strategy of securing a road, the “strategy” of winning the hearts and minds of indigenous populations—these are but a few of the misapplications of the term with which we are constantly bombarded by both reporters and so-called experts in the field. Not that the military has been much better in applying the term: two well-known modern commanders, Erich Ludendorff in World War I and Bernard Montgomery in World War II, never quite understood it either; the former thought of strategy as the act of merely punching a hole in the enemy's lines, while the latter cautioned his staff that strategy was strategy only if and when he, Montgomery, said it was.
Topic:
War
Political Geography:
Prussia