The Clausewitz Collection (merged thread)

[Infanteer]

The defeat of France was an operation that was part of a larger strategy.

I don't see it that way, and I don't really recall it being explained that way when I learned about strategy and tactics. The defeat of France was a strategy; a linking of ways and means to ends. Ends were defined by German policy (sometimes called grand strategy, but I find that muddies the definition of strategy). The defeat was accomplished by tactical maneuvers by the Army Group commanders down, all who were able to link their tactics to the strategy of knocking out France.

The most clear way of explaining this relationship that I was given was the Schlieffen Plan. The policy was a rapid defeat in West to quickly reinforce the East. The strategy was the "wide right hook" through Belgium, keeping the right strong and tactics were all the stuff that the military performed to do so. Obviously, there was a failure in the application of the operational art as the tactics, especially concerning 1st Army in and around Paris, did not synch with the strategy.

I'm not arguing that the operational art doesn't exist - it is the art of linking tactics to strategy and people can be poor or good at it. It involves those factors that you mention.

What I am arguing (after seeing how Wilf explained it) is that it is not a separate and distinct "level of war" that is practiced by commanders and their staffs; rather it is a mechanism that they all use. I am arguing this because it makes sense to me and upon reflection, I've never seen any manual really make a good explanation for the operational art as a separate and distinct level of war. As a platoon commander in Afghanistan, I used operational art to apply my tactics (patrolling) to the strategy (neutralizing insurgent access to the population) which supported the policy (supporting the Karzai government). Comd RC(S), a Div Comd, did the same thing by using the operational art to link his tactics for Moshtarek (maneuvering forces into a contested area) to the strategy (neutralizing insurgent access to the population) which support the policy (supporting the Karzai government). Sure, Major General Carter and I had different considerations, but it doesn't change the fact that our processes were the same.

Tactics: "the art or science of disposing military or naval forces for battle and maneuvering them in battle." from Dictionary.com. Makes sense to me. Arguing that the "operational art" is what brigades and higher do is just making up a name instead of simply acknowledging that tactical considerations are different for different levels of command. It appears to be forcing a distinction where none really exists. Fuchs states that since there is a difference between battalion and corps tactical considerations, that there must be separate and unique "level of war". Things like march planning, bridging equipment and air power sound like tactics to me. Tactical considerations are also different between platoon and battalion - are there different levels of war at play here? No - tactics are applied by anyone commanding troops, from a squad leader to an Army group commander; the considerations just differ based on the amount of men commanded and the size of the terrain being utilized.

Now, as M.L. said, 90% of the community may say I'm wrong, but 90% of the community also pushed out crap like Maneuver Warfare and Pop-centric COIN, with all the inherent flaws, as doctrine so I'm okay with that. Maybe I'm just being argumentative, but the argument above makes more sense to me than the one that states that there is some magical level between tactics and strategy. Operational art is a independant variable existing within tactics and strategy, not a concrete level between them. One does not get promoted to Brigadier General and all of the sudden leave the realm of tactics to function on the "operational level of war".