Thanks for saying this; The arrogance of some to suggest that Coin is the "graduate" level, or that Coin is more difficult than conventional war has always seemed over the top to me. What do such statements imply; that conventional war is the undergraduate level? I mean i have not experienced conventional war, only coin, but are we to say that then Colonel George C Marshall as Pershing's Chief of Staff as he shuffled hundreds of thousands of troops from one front to another to take part in the Meuse Argonne operated at the undergraduate level? Or a Russian tank battalion commander at the battle of Kursk, was he at the undergraduate level too. And just one more to throw in there; consider Frederick the Great as he masterfully shifted his army using a central position and interior lines at Rossbach and Leuthen to defeat the French then Austrians in sequence, he was a Junior in college while the 101st in Mosul in 2003 was writing their dissertation? Don’t want to sound mean but let’s just call all forms of war difficult in their own way. And we can always use St Carl's classic line: Everything in war is very simple but the simplest thing is very difficult."Originally Posted by Ken White
Agree with your point on Principles; your list looks good to me. I wrote the post because i found the idea of wrestling in one's head what they should be a good way to get at the deeper problem of defining the nature of war as we know it today and in the future.
gian
Bookmarks