The Clausewitz Collection (merged thread)

[slapout9]

Wrong. Deciding what objectives and conditions must be achieved (end state) is the most fundamental act of strategy. Balancing ways and means to achieve those objectives is second.

Strategy built solely on targeting is poor strategy. That kind of thinking is what went wrong in Iraq. CENTCOM focused on what to attack (Iraqi Army, Hussein Regime), rather than focusing on strategic objectives.

1- An Objective is a person, place, or thing according to CvC is it not? That is also what a target is it not?

2-CENTCOM focused on attacking the wrong targets...which is very bad Startegy. There was far better plan by General Wayne Downing (who new how to target to achieve the polictical objective) that was rejected and he pretty said what would happen because of that and it did.



From Clausewtiz himself( Book 4)...Strategic targeting all laid out nice and neat.

"Destruction of the enemy's military forces is in reality the object of all combats; but other objects maybe joined to that, and these other objects may be at the same time predominant; we must therefore draw a distinction between those in which the destruction of the enemy's forces is the principal object, and those in which it is more the means. Besides the destruction of the enemy's force, the possession of a place or the possession of some object may be the general motive for a combat, and it may be either one of these alone or several together, in which case still usually one is the principal motive. Now the two principal forms of War, the offensive and defensive, of which we shall shortly speak, do not modify the first of these motives, but they certainly do modify the other two, and therefore if we arrange them in a scheme they would appear thus:—"

Offensive. Defensive.

1. Destruction of enemy's force. 1. Destruction of enemy's force.

2. Conquest of a place. 2. Defence of a place.

3. Conquest of some object. 3. Defence of some object.