TE Lawrence: a merged thread

[Fuchs]

Tactics seem to be rather constant as well - the difference seems to be largely about the tools and weapons used.

Cannae is still a valid blueprint for encirclement battles, and Epaminondas introduced the Schwerpunkt into tactics with his oblique order.

[Firn]

Tactics seem to be rather constant as well - the difference seems to be largely about the tools and weapons used.

Cannae is still a valid blueprint for encirclement battles, and Epaminondas introduced the Schwerpunkt into tactics with his oblique order.

Indeed, just like ambushes in the Battle of Lake Trasimene or Battle of the Teutoburg Forest are still valid examples of the core tactical principles of an ambush. Even the Stone/Copper Age offers us pretty good examples of raids and ambushes.

IIRC, the "Art of War" has IMHO an apt quote:

There are no more than five musical notes, yet the variations in the five notes cannot all be heard.

There are no more than five basic colors, yet the variations in the five colors cannot all be seen.

There are no more than five basic flavors, yet the variations in the five flavors cannot all be tasted. ?

Today one might say that the political aims, strategy and METT-TC drive the tactical combination making every engagement singular.

It is also interesting to see how the basic tactical organisation of ancient warfare into Vanguard, Rearguard, Center, Right Wing, Left Wing have been used at smaller and smaller unit scale.

[Erich G. Simmers]

I apologize ahead of time for two posts; I managed to exceed the maximum character count for single post.

Judging by how much clausewitz gets qouted in awe on this board, I'd have to say that more posters will agree with it than they will actually admit.

Honestly, that is part of the reason I wanted to see people's responses to it here.

T.E. Lawrence was as much a charlatan and fraud as Liddell-Hart, albeit a possibly brave one. Why give any credence to a discussion of men poorly informed on the subject?

I may not post here much, but I do read quite a bit and--like another poster said--I expected you to respond. I am glad you did, and I appreciate your thoughts on the matter. However, I will take issue with your argument.

First, you mischaracterize Lawrence and Liddell Hart. Whatever we may think about the veracity of their various claims or their theories about warfare, both men were hardly "poorly informed." Liddell Hart spent the better part of the twentieth-century writing and thinking war, so however wrong, deceitful, or whatever else he may be, he is not "poorly informed." Lawrence wrote this letter after not only his experience in the Arab Revolt but also his time as an advisor to Churchill. Again, whatever else he may be, he is not "poorly informed." Secondly, even if they are wrong about strategy or deceitful, both Lawrence and Liddell Hart warrant study, because they both continue to have significant influence on military thinking for better or ill. Ignoring them--especially in Lawrence's case, give his post-9/11 re-appearance in military rhetoric--will not make them go away.

I understand that you do not like these two men; that is fine, but an ad hominem attack does not offer anything new to the conversation. What do you think about this idea that strategy is something eternal and tactics is something ever-changing? Agree? Disagree?

b.) Comparing Haig, with Belisarius is an exercise in futility and shows an very poor understanding of the considerable challenges that Haig faced.

Third, he is not comparing the two; he is contrasting them. By writing that "[a] general can learn as much from Belisarius as from Haig," it is clear that he is stressing their differences, not their similarities.[1] It is important to note, also, that there is no evidence in the letter that the contrast reflects negatively on Haig. So far, I cannot find any other references to Haig in his letters, so I am not sure what he thought of the man. (For my thoughts on Haig, see below.)

Lastly, you are missing what I believe to be the most interesting point of the letter: that not only can an ancient strategist be as useful as a (at least for Lawrence) contemporary one, but also that strategy as a discourse is not some march of progress in which contemporary strategists have more to offer by virtue of either the retrospection of history or the benefit of technology. Instead, tactics for Lawrence seems to depend absolutely on place, time, and technology. If anyone disagrees with this reading, I have reproduced the whole letter for context below:

Dear L-H

I have read this [Liddell Hart's The Ghost of Napoleon] twice, once to get its idea, and once with my pencil in hand. It has been a queer experience--like going back, in memory, to school--for by myself (though with far less knowledge, and hesitatingly) I had trodden all this road before the war. It is a very good little book: modest, witty and convincing. You realize, of course, that you are swinging the pendulum, and that by 1960 it will have swung too far!

So far as I can see strategy is eternal, & the same and true: but tactics is the ever-changing language through which it speaks. A general can learn as much from Belisarius as from Haig--but not a soldier. Soldiers have to know their means.

I can't write an introduction: none is necessary. Your sub-title should be 'a tract for the times.'

Yours,

TES[2]

I have have highlighted to passages above, because Lawrence seems to be arguing against a general thrust of Liddell Hart's theories: that Germany lost in World War I because of "old" thinking (particularly its devotion to Clausewitz) and that "new" thinking (specifically Liddell Hart himself) would win wars. In fairness, I have not read Ghosts of Napoleon, because I cannot find a copy at the moment, but this is how others have characterized his argument.[3] I do not agree with either premise, but, as the kids say, "it is what it is." If Liddell Hart is saying that the British had been too slavishly devoted to "old" strategy, Lawrence is warning Liddell Hart that future military thinkers may ignore valuable "old" thinkers in favor of the "new" at their own peril. This is the "pendulum" that Lawrence is discussing. Instead, Lawrence seems to take the stand that there is no 'progress of ideas' when it comes to strategy, that across time and intellectual traditions there is a universal value. A "new" idea is not more valuable by virtual of its "newness." At the very least, Lawrence's suggested subtitle--"A Tract for the Times"--would seem to delimit Liddell Hart's theory to a specific point in history and to offset any sweeping generalization that 'new' will forever be better.

This issue that "new" is not necessarily better seems obvious, but it is worth thinking about the ascendency of Revolution in Military Affairs, first in the Soviet Union and later in the United States.[4] Indeed, the date that Lawrence names, 1960, as this tipping point of the pendulum coincides roughly with RMA's emergence in the Soviet Union.[5] While it may be a stretch to link Lawrence and RMA, he most definitely predicted the perils of a time in the future when people's obsession with the new and newness would cloud military thinking.

[Continued below...]

[Erich G. Simmers]

What I find fascinating is that someone such as Lawrence who was obsessed with speed and technology whether it was motorcycles, armor, airplanes, or boats would be so measured in his approach to technology. In fact, Lawrence had been from a very cautious about the limits of airpower. He wrote in 1923 letter to A. P. Wavell:

"Bombing tribes is ineffective. I fancy that air-power may be effective against elaborate armies: but against irregulars it has no more than moral value. The Turks had plenty [of] machines, & used them freely against us--and never hurt us till the last phase, when we had brought 1000 of regulars on the raid against Deraa. Guerrilla tactics are a complete muffing of air-force.[6]

At the time, Lawrence's contemporaries were raving about "air-control methods" and bombing "the natives" into submission throughout Iraq and India. To reiterate my previous point about Lawrence's worth, this is another lesson that not only his contemporaries but also folks like Ullman and Wade should have thought about before they imagined their "new" means of warfare.[7]

a.) Yes, soldiers have to understand their weapons performance and capabilities. So what? Lawrence is just coming to a realisation that most professional officers knew already.

Following on what I have already stated, Lawrence seems to be arguing that--as you say--"weapons performance and capabilities" is something apart from and subservient to strategy and that is properly located on a tactical level. That, for me, is a pretty significant "so what," because--even after almost a decade of fighting insurgents--there are many who think that the answer to asymmetric threats whether it be near-peer competitors or insurgents will be some whiz-bang stealth airburst something-or-other to win the day. Moreover, there is a real value to the mindset that--whether it is a complex global insurgency or designing a better mousetrap--one, someone else may have considered the problem, and two, that person may have had a better solution even though they did not have the advantage of being born in your century and couldn't leverage Google, a Blackberry, an XM25, a JSF, or whatever fancy-pants tech that the future holds. The mind will forever be the greatest weapon, and many who came before did a better job honing that weapon.

Tactics seem to be rather constant as well - the difference seems to be largely about the tools and weapons used.

Cannae is still a valid blueprint for encirclement battles, and Epaminondas introduced the Schwerpunkt into tactics with his oblique order.

I was thinking along those lines as well, but I haven't quite made up my mind. (See my discussion of technology and tactics above.)

Off-Topic:

I, however, am no great fan of Haig. In my opinion, his greatest challenge was his own absolute lack of imagination and the existential burden of wasting hundreds of thousands of lives on an outmoded strategy that had been proven ineffective over a period of years. Let's contrast General Sir Herbert Plumer and Field Marshal Douglas Haig.

On June 7, 1917, General Plumer had utilized British miners to tunnel under key points of the German lines and planted high explosives. Ten-thousand Germands were killed instantly, and 7,000 panicked and were captured. As Paul Fussell writes, "Nine British divisions and seventy-two tanks attacked straightway on a ten-mile front. At the relatively low cost of 16,000 casualties they occupied Vimy Ridge."[8] The attack showed ingenuity and a willingness to divert from tactics that had produced an extremely costly stalemate for the duration of the war.

Even after this, Haig persisted with the same tactics. On July 31, 1917, British forces under the command of Haig attacked toward Passchendaele in what would be known as the Third Battle of Ypres. Direct frontal attack followed a prolonged artillery barrage. Fussell writes, "The bombardment churned up the ground; rain fell and turned the dirt to mud. I the mud the British assaulted until the attack finally attenuated three and a half months later. Price: 370,000 British dead and wounded and sick and frozen to death. Thousands literally drowned in the mud. It was a repose of the Somme, but worse."[9] I understand that Haig still has his defenders, but I have a hard time conceiving anyone, in good conscience, defending his strategy. To wit, I am not arguing he did not use armor properly or understand the machine gun; I am arguing that his strategy won out not because of its brilliance but because the German army had exhausted itself advances of 1918 and that he paid far too high a cost for that Pyrrhic victory.

Very respectfully,

Erich

-------

[1]. Lawrence, 473.

[2]. Ibid.

[3]. See John J. Mearsheimer, Liddell Hart and the Weight of History (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988), 49-50.

[4]. See Frederick W. Kagan, Finding the Target: The Transformation of American Military Policy (New York: Encounter Books, 2006), ix-xix.

[5]. Ibid, xi.

[6]. Lawrence, 238-239.

[7]. See Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade, Shock And Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance (National Defense University, 1996).

[8]. Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), 14-16.

[9]. Ibid, 16.