Brodie Strategy as a Science

7/27/2019 Brodie Strategy as a Science

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STRATEGY AS A SCIENCEB y B E R N A R D B R O D I Erecent resignations from posts of high civil authorityor ceremonial rank of former military officers will noHEdou bt al lay som ewhat the suspicions cu rrent a year o r more agoth a t the mili tary were "moving in" where they did no t belong.

A lthoug h th e original app oin tm en t to civil posts of such men asGenerals George C. M arsha ll and W al te r B . Sm i th was hard lydu e to design on th e pa rt of the arm ed services, being q uite easilyan d plausibly explained on o ther an d q uite innocuous grounds,the m il i ta ry depar tm ents unquest ionably do have a grea ter in-fluence upon high policy decisions than was true before the re-cent war. It is therefore tim e to express concern not so mu ch th atth at m ili tary will move in where they do no t belong, b ut ratherth at in th e process of moving in where in part , a t least, they dobelong, their advice will reflect their imperfections not as diplo-m atists b u t as soldiers.That concern, besides receiving its immortal expression inthe famous apothegm of Clemenceau th at war was too imp ortan tt o be left to th e generals, has often been expressed by soldiersthemselves.' It is not simply that the waging of war or thepreparation for it requires many skills to which the soldiermakes no pretentions. It is that the skill which is peculiarly hisown is in all but the rarest instances incomplete with respectto on e of its fundamentals-a genu ine un ders tand ing of mili-ta ry s t ra tegy.That is hardly surprising, since the understanding wouldhave to follow th e developm ent of a theoretical fram ew ork w hichas yet can scarcely be said to exist. Creating the mere founda-tions of such a framework would require a huge enterprise ofscholarship, an d the m ilitary profession is n ot a scholarly call-

On e of t he more recent instances is contained in t he illumina ting book Operation V i c to r y(New York, Scribner's, 1947), by Major General Sir Francis de Guingand. former Chiefof Staff to Marsh al Montgomery. Th is author points ou t again and again th at the W orldW a r I1 experiences of th e British Arm y reflected a lack of train ing in high stra teg y onth e part of th e Brit ish armed services, which ha ve in fact devoted a t least as much attentionto th e subject as their American counterparts .


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468 WORLD POLITICSing-as its m em bers would be th e first to insist. N or, for variousreasons, including good ones, does it wish to become so. Thescholar who on rare occasions appears within its ranks can ex-pect but scant reward for the special ta lents he demonstrates.It is for quite different accomplishments that the silver starswhich are the final accolade of success are bestowed.T h e soldier's rejection of th e contem plative life wo uld be ofn o concern to him or to us if th e universally e ndu ring m axims ofwar-the so-called "classical principles of strategyv-w hich ar equite simply elucidated and easily understood, really did pro-vide an adequate foundation upon which to erect precise stra-tegic plans. T h e soldier has been tra ine d to believe th a t they do.I shal l t ry to dem onstra te t ha t on the contrary the theory con-tained in those maxims is far too insubstantial to enable oneeven to begin o rganizing th e pressing problems in th e field, th a tth e bare core of the ory which they do em body is cap able of an ddem ands meaningful elaboration, an d tha t th a t elaboration andth e m aste ry of i t by m ilitary practitioners m us t require inten-sive, rigorous, and therefore prolonged intellectual application.If I succeed in doing tha t, there will be no difficulty in dem on-strating t h a t strategy is n ot receiving th e scientific trea tm en t i tdeserves either in the armed services or, certainly, outside ofthem. A nd i t will a lso be qu ite easy to show th at ou r fai lure totra in o ur m ilitary leaders in th e scientific stu dy of strategy hasbeen costly in war, and is therefore presumptively-perhapseven demonstrably-being costly also in o u r present securityefforts.There are, to be sure, certain basic ideas about fighting awar which over the centuries have been proved valid. Theseideas have been exalted by various writers to the status of"principles," an d have been distingu ished from o th er eleme ntsin th e a r t of generalship chiefly by th eir presum ptive ch aracte rof being unchanging. "Methods change, but principles are un-changing" is the often-quoted dictum of Jomini. These princi-ples, while not often apparent to the uninitiated, are certainlynot esoteric. They have the characteristic of being obvious atleast when pointed ou t, and m an y generals, f rom Napoleon toEisenh ow er, have stressed their e ssential simplicity.However, it is also true that as generally presented, tbese


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STRATEGY AS A SCIENCE 469"principles" are skeletal in the extreme. T h ey no t on ly containwithin themselves no h ints on how they m ay be implemented inpractice, b u t their very expression is usually in term s w hich ar eeither ambiguous or question-begging in their implications-atrait which has grown m ore marked since Jomini's day u nd erth e effort to preserve for the m th e ch arac teristic of being un-changing. For example, in a recent list of ten "Principles ofWar" adopted by the Canadian Chiefs of Staff Committee forthe use and guidance of the Canadian Armed Forces, we find"Econom y of Effort" (trad ition ally called "Econom y ofForce") listed as N o. 7, with the following explanation:7. ECONOMY OF EFFORT

Economy of effort implies a balanced employment of forces, and ajudicious expenditure of all resources with the object of achieving aneffective concent ra t ion a t the decisive t ime and place. 'T he four words I have italicized are obviously the points atissue. T o give them genuine meaning in a way t h a t would con-

vert them to tools useful in the planning process would clearlyrequire in each case a large am ou n t of analytical elaboration.On e m us t note, of course, th a t even as state d th e principle is no twithout meaning. I t argues that mili tary resources should notbe wasted either through fail ing to use them at al l or throughdispersing them among ill-chosen or ill-coordinated objective^.^*41though he idea is thu s reduced to a truis m , th e fact remainsthat i ts violation has often been advocated during war andsometimes practiced, and is also clear historically that in them ain ( thou gh with conspicuous exceptions) the m ilitary leader

?Re printed from an ar t ic le in the Canadian Army Journal for December 1947 by MilitaryReview, vol. 28, no. 7 (October, 19 48 ), pp. 88f. T h e Can adia n list of principles, which Ia m selecting only because it happen s to be one of the most recent official prono uncem entson the sub ject, app ears to be a som ewhat revised version of an article published u nde rth e title "Principles of M odern W arfare" in th e Royal Air For Quarterly (Grea t Br i t a in) ,January, 1948.' 3 T o he purist i t must be acknowledged th at this interpretation and indeed th e originalCana dian sta tem ent quo ted somewhat scramble a t least two of th e traditional principles.As usua lly stated , th e principle of "Econom y of Fo rce" confines itself to th e dic tumth a t all forces available should be effectively utilized. T h e rest of th e .tate me nt belongsto th e doctrine usually called the "Principle of Concentration." Th ere is also more thana redolence of t h a t fine old thou ght called th e "Principle of th e Aim." In th at connectionit is noteworthy that the Canadian l is t ci ted does give place to the lat ter two principles, asNos. 6 and 1 respectively, an d th e authors seem to be unaw are th at in No. 7 they werelargely repea ting themselves. All of which ma y conceivably reflect th e barre nne ss of th econcepts.


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470 WORLD POLITICShas been somewhat less prone to reject or ignore the principlethan the civilian leader who sometimes urges strategic viewsupon him . T h e soldier's indo ctrination is thus n ot with ou t value,since it tends to fix in th e fro n t of his m ind a rule w hich m ightotherwise slip ou t of th a t place, bu t i t am oun ts to l i tt le more- tha n a pointed injun ct ion to use common sense .T h er e have been a nu m ber of books-extraordinarily few ina n y one generation-which have atte m pte d to ad d flesh t o th ebare bones of the orthodox principles by presenting historicalexamples both of their conspicuous violation and of their idealobservance.' These have been exceedingly useful contributions,an d it would be a good thi ng if m ore professional soldiers readthem. In a day when the techniques of war changed but l i t t lefrom one generation to the next, they were mo re tha n adequate.Napo leon, who o ften m entione d th e simplicity of th e principlesby which he was guided, nevertheless admonished those whowould emula te hi m : "Read over and over again the campaignsof Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar , Gustavus, Turenne, Eugene,and Frederick. M ak e them your models . This is the only way tobecome a gre at general and t o m aste r the secrets of war." It isstill a good rule. It tempts one to indulge the fantasy that ifAdmira l Halsey had read over and over again the campaignsof Nelson and his colleagues in the wars of 1793-1815 (qui teaccessible in M a h a n an d elsewhere), he migh t have been a gooddeal m ore skeptical of th e "Don't divide th e fleet" doc trine t h a tbetrayed him a t Leyte Gulf.I n th e present day, with the techniques of w ar changing rad-ically no t only from gen eration to generation b ut from decadeto decade, a list of theorems inherited almost intact from theearly nineteenth century, however much embroidered by ex-amples even from recent military history, can hardly serve thefunction generally reposed up on it . T h e m ode rn officer account-able for strategic plann ing an d decisions has a burden of whichhis coun terp art of a cen tury o r more ago was quite free. Nelson

'One of the best mod em examples is Majo r-Gen eral Sir Frede rick Maurice's Pn'nciplrsof Strategy, New York, R. R. Smith, 1930. On the naval side we have, besides the worksof Mahan, the excellent volume by Julian S. Corbett, Som e Principles of Mar itime S tra teg y,London, 1911. Corbett, incidentally, was a civilian and a professional historian, andth e chief works of M ah an likewise are essentially an d predom inantly histories with on lyoccasional analytical interjections.


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472 WORLD POLITICSservice o r th e entire profession of arm s, b u t in an y case itprovides in th e area a n d in the m om ent of i ts ascendancyth e key to th e basic decisions. "Th e ram is th e mo st formidableof all the weapons o f th e ship" was a dic tum never genu inelysubstant ia ted in bat t le a nd basically untrue , b ut i t dominatednav al architectu re for almo st half a century."'He will win whohas the resolution t o advance" was the max im of d u Picq w hichinspired the pre-World War I French school of the ogensive rioutrance. It m ight have better survived the battles of 1914 h adno t those battles inspired a slogan even mo re terse an d ho m ely :"Fire kil ls ." Those lat ter two words, trenchant enough butscarcely incisive, had more to do with determining Allieds t ra tegy in Wor ld War I t han any number of v o lu m ~ s ouldpossibly have ha d.T h e max im m ay indeed be the su preme dist il late of profoundthou ght, b u t only at its first use-that is, when it is still an a ptexpression and not yet a slogan. No sooner does it becomecurrency th an it is counterfeit. T h e func tion of a slogan is toindu ce rigidity of tho ug ht an d behavior in a particular direction,which in a rt ma y me an th e development of a school having itsow n distinctive value. If the con duct of w ar is a n a rt rather th a na science, as is often alleged, a t least it is not a rt for art's sak e.T h e progress of strate gy as a science will be roughly m eas urab leby th e degree to w hich i t frees itself from addiction t o th e slogan.

Of late the arm ed services have, to be sure, devoted some careto ana lyzin g th e "lessons" of their cam paigns . G eneral E isen-hower, for example, shortly af ter V-E D ay set up a commissionunder G eneral L. T . Gerow to study the lessons of the E urop eanthea t re in W or ld W ar 11. D esp ite th e pre-occupation of suc hstudies with tactics and especially administration, their valuefor stim ula ting strategic insights is potentially great. B u t unlessthe an alysts a re properly equipped intellectually t o exploit suchvalues, th e net res ult of th e studies is likely to be t h a t of inten-sifying the mili tary propensity to "prepare for the last war."W ith their tradit ional reverence for w hat they term the "prac-tical," th e m ilit ary are inclined to dignify by th e nam e of "battleexperience" w ha t is in fact a n excessively narr ow pragm atism .

See my Sra Potucr in thc Machine Agc, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2nded.. 1943, pp. 85-8, 237. This idea and its origin provide an interesting case studyin th e deriving of tactic al "lessons" fro m the experience of ba ttle .


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STRATEGY AS A SCIENCE 473T h er e is of course no sub stitu te for the test of b att le or ex-perience in war, but the re a re a t least three reasons w hy suchexperience is of limited usefulness and may even be positivelymisleading.First , since great changes occur from one war to the next,m ilitary planne rs are obliged to m ak e far-reaching decisions o nissues concerning which there is little or no directly applicableexperience. W e certainly have n o experience toda y w ith the m assuse of ato m ic bom bs. T h e re is a good deal of experience whichis in some m ann er re levant, bu t i t mus t be sought ou t a nd ap-plied with subtlety and discrimination and with constant con-cern for th e qualifications en joine d by th e elem ents of dissim-ilarity." T h e incredible an d sometimes disastrou s lag of tacticaland strategic conceptions behind developments in materiel,which M a h a n regretfully regarded as inevitable in view of th eanc ient "conservatism" of t h e mili tar y profession, is due less t oconserva tism th an to th e absence of th e hab it of scientific think -ing.Secondly, th e larger decisions of an y wa r, or of th e prepa ra-tion for t h a t war, cast the m old for the experience which ensues,so th a t the results often fail t o provide a basis for judgm ent uponthose decisions. The experience may be fortunate or unfortu-nate; but since the enemy's responses have a good deal to dowith its being one or th e other, a nd since his capacity for erro rmay be no less than one's own, one cannot rely upon successor failure to provide the whole answer. Was a decision whichturned ou t well rather th an i ll a good decision? Fr om the prag-m at ic point of view, clearly yes ! B ut the analyst who wishes toderive general lessons applicable to the future, who is anxiousto find the solution which will minimize the appalling human

" Professor P. M. S. Blackett has demonstrated that even a person trained as a scientistmay conspicuously fail to demonstrate proper discrimination in applying analogous ex-perience to th e military problem of th e atomic bo mb. See hi s Fear, War, and the Bomb,New York, Whittlesey, 1949. The only safeguard against such error, as in any field ofscientific endea vor, lies in exp andin g the nu m be r of p ersons with sim ilar competence. I nthis instance. Dean Louis Ridenour, among others, was able promptly to expose some ofthe fallacies in Blackett's analysis. See his review article in Scientific Amrrican, vol. 180,no . 3 march, 1949), pp. 16-19 (reprinted in World Politics, vol. I , no. 3 , under thetitle of "The B om b an d Blackett"). In t h e militar y profession th e problem of criticismis greatly compounded by the institution of rank, with its extravagant rigidities not onlyof obedience but also deference. Through the process of promotion the individual isaccorded, by fiat, wisdom as well as authority, the stage of infallibility being attaineda t approximately the fourth star .


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474 WORLD POLITICScosts of war, may not be so easily persuaded. He will be ob-liged to go beyo nd history-i.e., beyo nd experience-to exploreth e feebly lit realm of "w hat m igh t have been."Thirdly, even within the scope of what our experience doesillum inate, th e lessons i t affords are rarely obvious in t h e senseof being self-evident. T o o m an y "analyses" of W or ld W a r I1experience remind one of th e sev en blind m en who toucheddifferent parts of the elephant. The evidence which relates toa question is generally massive a nd m an y sided. Its exa m inationrequires not only thoroughness but also imagination. The ex-am iner m us t be on th e alert for rigidities of th ou gh t an d actionin the actors which vitiate d the resu lts of even repeated experi-ment.' H e m us t look for the hidden jokers in a situation, th evagaries of c ircum stan ce which profou ndly affected th e out-come, and m us t clearly dist inguish between the unique an d th erepresentative. I n sho rt, he mu st engage in a refined an alyticalop eratio n involving a large eleme nt of disciplined specu lation.T h e task requires a m ind train ed for analysis and for the r igor-ou s scru tin y of evidence.T h e strategist of th e Am erican arm ed forces has often in th epa st stressed th e difficulty of his problems as com pared with hisopposite number of European mili tary establishments. Thelatte r has always been m uch less in do ub t concerning th e iden-tity of th e probable adv ersary an d the probable theaters of oper-ations. Although the Soviet Union has very conveniently nar-rowed the problem for us, th e sets of circumstances wh ich-m ightgovern a conflict with th at co un try still cover an ex traordinarilybroad range. It is all the more necessary, therefore, that we

'T h e Ba ttle for Ley te Gulf furnishes some interesting illustrations of th e rigidities towhich I refer, of which I shall here mention only one. Because it had been so in everyprevious maj or action in th e Pacific War, Ad miral Halsey erroneously assum ed t h a t inthis instance too th e enemy's principal force had to b e where his carriers were. H is con-viction th a t battleships could only play a su ppo rting role caused him t o confine his ownbattleships to such a role. By keeping them with the fleet which he threw against a decoyforce he deprived the m of a n y chance of affecting th e outcome. If h is six modern battle -ships had been left off th e mou th of San Bernardino St rai t th ey would almo st certainlyhave sunk the m ajor force of th e Japanese Fleet . An interesting question poses itself:had that happened, what would have been the popular (and professional) at t i tude todayon the value of th e bat tleship typ e? I t might not have been a wiser a t t i tude than thepres ently prevailing one-Leyte Gulf was aft er all a special case-but it would surelyhave been different. Since I am making several references to Leyte Gulf, I might referthe reader to my review art icle on the subject , "The Batt le for Leyte Gulf," YirginiaQuarterly Review, vol. 2 3 , No. 3 (Summer, 1947), pp. 455-60.


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475TRATEGY AS A SCIENCEdevelop a conceptual framework adequate not only as a baseof de pa rtu re for specific strate gic plans b u t a lso as a m ean s ofweighing o ne plan against ano ther. T h e planning operation goeson apace. T he re are divisions of t h e M ilit ary E stablishm ent setup for th a t purpose which m anag e to keep themselves e arnestlyem ployed . All so rts of new pa raph erna lia, includ ing electroniccom puter m achines for solving logistics an d m obilization prob-lems, are brought into use. All that is lacking is a conceptualbasis for determ ining w hether the plan in ha nd is a good one-whether it is better than some conceivable alternative. It is anold mil i tary dogma tha t a ny decis ion is bet ter th an no ne; thesame apparently holds t ru e for strategic plans.That strategic theory is reducible to a few common-sensepropositions does not distinguish it from other social sciences,including t h e science of econom ics, which h as u nd ou bte dly en-joyed the most systematic and intensive development amongth e social sciences a n d which, as I shall shortly point o ut, bearsoth er an d more significant parallels to strategy . O ne of ou r lead-ing economists, Professor Frank Knight, has characterized hisdiscipline as follows : "Economic thought runs almost entirelyin terms of th e obvious an d the com mon place . . .T he mos t in-teresting feat ure of econom ic theory is th a t its larger an d m oreim po rta nt qu estions are generally self-answering w hen explicitlyan d correctly stated-in so fa r as the y can be answered a t all.Indee d, th e problem of social action, from t he economic stan d-po int, is chiefly th a t of ge ttin g people . . . to a ct in accord withprinciples which when stated in simple and set terms are triteeven t o the m an on th e street." 'W he the r or n ot oth er economists would entirely agree-andan y process of re duc ing a large body of knowledge t o a few sim-ple propositions necessarily involves arbitrariness-the fa ct re-m ains t h a t one d istinguished econom ist was able to see his fieldin th a t l ight an d could presumably have produced the phrasesnecessary to implement his assertion. That he did not feel es-pecially obligated t o d o so is itself revealing. S ave for th e pu r-pose of persuading busy or simple people to a desired courseof action, there is no profit in such an enterprise. The profitis all in the opposite direction, in refinement and retesting of

Frank H . Knight, Freedom and Reform, New York, Harper, 1947, p. 130.


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476 WOR LD POLITIC Sone's conceptual tools in order that analysis of a particularproblem may be more precise, that is , more correct . At anyrate, in t h e effort t o explore the ramifications o r specific applica-tion of those questions which "are generally self-answeringwhen explicitly a n d correctly stated," th e economics professionhas produced a trem end ou s body of li ter atu re of im pressivequ ality . T h e far older profession of arm s, conten t with m erereitera tion of its who lly elem enta ry postulates, which change no twith th e changing years, has yet to roun d ou t a five-foot book-shelf of significant works o n strategy. T h e purpose of soldiers isobviously not to produce books, bu t one m ust assume th at anyreal ferment of thought could not have so completely avoidedbreaking in to print.gT h e comparison draw n above between economics an d strategyis especially tellin g in view of the sim ila rity of objec tives be-tween the two fields. Although the economist sometimes dis-claims responsibility for those com m un ity values which d eter-mine economic objectives, it is quite clear that historically hehas been devoted mainly t o discovering how th e resources of anation, material and human, can be developed and utilized forth e en d of m aximizing the total real wealth of th e natio n. Evenwhere somewhat different objectives are stressed, such as themaintenance of full employment, the character of his task isaffected only marginally, because that task is fundamentally astudy in efficiency. It is th e stu dy of th e efficient allocation ofthe nationa l (o r othe r com m unity ) resources for the economicends set dow n by the c om m unity, an d the lists of ends presentedwill differ from one com m unity to another an d from one genera-tion t o the next m ore in the n om inal priorities accorded specifici tems tha n in general content or basic structure.Strategy, by comparison, is devoted to discovering how theresources of th e nation, m aterial an d hu m an , can be developedan d utilized for th e end of maxim izing the to tal effectiveness ofthe natio n in war. Th e end thus stated is of course also subjectto various qualifications. During peacetime we are more inter-ested in avoiding w ar th an in winning one when i t comes, an d

I am trying desperately here t o restrain th e bias of t he academician th at th e effortof writing is an almo st indispensable cataly st t o the p roduction of original though ts.On the other hand, too many people have found that it is so to enable us quite to rejectth e idea.


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477TRATEGY AS A SCIENCEo u r m ilitary preparatio ns will be affected thereby n ot on ly qua n-titatively but qualitatively as well. Also, we wish to minimize,both i n peace a n d in war, the burd en w hich o ur security effortsimpose upon o ur pu rsu it of other values a nd objectives. Secur-ity is, after all, a derivative value, being meaningful only in sofa r as i t promotes an d m aintain s o ther values which have beenor are being realized an d are thoug ht wo rth securing, though inproportion to the mag nitude of the thre at i t m ay displace allothers in primacy. F o r th at reason there is a vast difference be-tween peace an d w ar in th e proportion of th e nation al resourcesmade available for security purposes. But in any case we aredea ling prim arily with problem s of efficiency in th e allocationof limited resources and with measuring means against policiesan d vice versa.I n the narrow er m ili tary sense, strategy deals only withmobilized resources and is concentrated upon achieving victoryover a specific enemy under a specific set of political and geo-graphic circumstances. But strategy must also anticipate thetrials of w ar, an d by anticipation to seek where possible t o in-crease one's advantage without unduly jeopardizing the main-tenanc e of peace or the pu rsuit of oth er values. T hi s broad er en-terprise, which might be called "security policy,"1 can be con-stru ed to cover the total prepa ration for w ar as well as the w ag-ing of it. It wo uld th us deal-though with clearly defined an dlimited objectives-with political, social, an d econom ic aswell as military matters in both domestic and foreign contexts.Security policy so defined can hardly be the province pri-m arily of th e soldier, tho ug h he sh ou ld be able to offer per tinen tadvice concerning it based o n his m astery of the m ilitary prob-lem. A large number of other skills are more directly related.I n m atters concerning indus tr ial mobilization, for example, thefunction of the military specialist is or should be confined tospecifying th e item s needed an d the ir respective orders of pri-ority. T h e hand ling of t he business mu st devolve upon th epoli t ic ian, the industr ial ist or the factory manager, and the

T h e tem ptatio n to use the finer-sounding phrase "grand strategy" mu st be suppressedin deference t o historic usage, though th a t term has sometimes been used t o cover wha tI mean b y "security policy." In tra ditio nal usage, "grand strate gy" refers to t he basicbut all-embracing features of a plan of war, as distinct from either the details of a warplan or the strategy of a particular campaign.


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478 W OR L D P OL IT IC Ssocial scientist. Similarly, in problems involving political rela-tions with o th er states, th e soldier's fun ctio n is confined to point-ing out the mili tary adv antage or d isadvantage which might beexpected to follow from a specific course of actio n. T h e q uestionof offsetting costs, political and otherwise, and the consequentdetermination of net profit or loss in a proposed policy is notonly a question of civilian responsibility but actually involvesskills with which the soldier is normally not equipped, thoughit is desirable that he appreciate the limitations in freedom ofmaneuver which beset the politician and the diplomatist. Evenin the m at te r of dete rm inin g th e overall size of t he d efense bu d-get, th e soldier has relatively little to con tribute. H e should beable to provide us with a rational plan for the allocation ofwhatever sums are accorded him, but the determination ofhow large those sum s should be m us t depend upon considerationof a wide ran ge of factors , m an y of which lie en tirely o uts idehis us ua l realm of discourse." One can go still closer to th e he ar tof th e m ilit ary problem-and point o u t th at th e strate gy ofstrateg ic bom bing is very largely a m at te r of t arg et selection,where the economist (possibly also the psychologist) has atleast as m uc h t o offer as the m ilitary specialist.I n an y case, whether we are discussing security policy in t hebroa d sense o r m ore specifically m ilita ry strategy---or eventactics-we ar e discussing problem s involving econom y ofmeans, i.e., th e m os t efficient utilization of potential a n d avail-able resources to th e end of enhancing o ur security. O ne m ightexpect to find, therefore, th a t a su bsta ntial p ar t of classicaleconomic theory is directly applicable to th e a nalysis of prob-lems in mi litary strateg y. One might furt he r expect th at if thehighly developed conceptual framew ork which lies ready a t handin th e field of economics were in fac t so applied, or a t least exam -ined f o r th e suggestive analogies which i t offers, some very posi-tive results w ould follow.A good examp le is to be fou nd in th e m ilitary con cept of th e"balanced force," i n th e nam e of which all sorts of aggressions

ll Al l wi:l agree that concerning military appropriations t he soldier is not well situatedto tell us what w7e can afford. But what is equally important, he lacks an y objective criteriafor telling us what he needs. Under pressure from Congress, he is accustomed to presentinghis "minimum essential requirements" in qui te precise terms; bu t if he were under equalpressure to be honest, he would admit the wholly illusory character of tha t precision. Iam developing this point in another paper to be published shortly.


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STRATEGY AS A SCIENCE 479against good sense have been perpetrated . T h e concept has beenapplied to all levels of military organization, tactical andstrategic, and has long been familiar in its distinctively navalform of the "balanced fleet." Almost too obvious to be worthrecording, b u t nevertheless basic an d all-too-often forgotten, isthe point that "balance7' can mean lit t le or nothing except inrelation to predictions o r expectations concerning circumstancesof f utu re com bat, inclu ding those circumstanc es created by one'sown strate gic plan s. A force which is well "balanced" with re-spect to one set of circum stances is likely to be w holly u nbal-anced with respect to another, except in so far as the balancesought represents a compromise between different sets of pos-sible or probab le circumstances.'"Once this point were firmly grasped, and the effort made toestab lish orde rs of proba bility a nd of r is k lY o r various sets ofcircumstances-in strate gy we ar e always dealing with m ulti-ple-contingency analysis-we would have a con text for resolv-ing th e issues of b alan ce according to the well-known conceptof marg ina l u t i l i t y . T h a t is, a balanced force could be defined

l2 In a pen etrat ing essay wri t ten during his imprisonment, Gra nd Admiral K arl D oenitzhas analyzed Germany's fai lure on the seas in World War 11. IIe argues convincinglyth at if Germ any had concentrated her pre-war naval expenditures mainly or exc l~ siv el ~.on th e subm arine arm-instead of dispersing he r nav al resources on a "symm etrically bal-anced" fleet-she would have been able t o defeat G rea t Britain within a few months ofthe opening of hostilities. Th e error in judgm ent stemm ed from EIitler's conviction t h a tthe y would n ot hav e to f ight the Bri t ish and th a t a surface fleet ~ vou ld be useful fordominating the Balt ic against the Soviet Union. Through Doenitz does not make the point .wh at he is in effe ct arguing is th a t a balanced fleet for a war against the Soviet Unionalone was a wholly unbalanced one for a war against Bri tain, and that proper balancefor the latter task would have entailed almost exclusive reliance on the submarine.l3Clearly applicable in this connection is an idea which an economist in a high policy-making post in the go vernme nt has called "the principle of th e least harm," and whichmight be expressed as follows: Other things being equal, that policy should be selectedwhich will do the least damage in case the prediction upon which it is based turns outto be wrong. Or, in othe r words, different sets of circum stances envisaged a s possiblefor the future must be weighted for policy purposes not alone according to their presumedorde rs of proba bility b u t also according to th e degree of risk inhe rent in the policywhich each suggests. One can of course point to numerous instances in th e military

field where this principle has been more or less consciously followed. The only admoni t ionnecessary is th a t th e "order of proba bility," while it mus t be qualified b y considerationsof risk, should no t be lost sight of. Otherwise. t he "principle of th e least harm "will no doubt serve to incur the most harm. For those interested in mathematicalsystematization of this an d related problems, t he work of Professors John von N eum annand Oskar Morgenstern on the theory of games would be illuminating. See their Theory ofGames and Economic Behavior, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1947. IIowever,for various reasons I do not share their conviction that their theory could be directlyand profitably applied to problems of military str ateg y.


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480 WORLD POLITICSas one in which the marginal util i t ies, tactically and strategi-cally considered, of the last increments to each of the existingcompo nents were app roximately equalized. T o gauge m arginalutili t ies among those components would be anything but easy,b u t a t leas t th e conceptual basis of balance w ould be clarified ina w ay th a t helped to indicate the scope and the direction of theanalysis necessary to provide the answers. In that respect thesitua tion would be imm easurab ly superior to reliance upon suchtradition-cha rged abs tractio ns as "homogeneous7' an d "sym-metrical," to mention two adjectives frequently found in con-so rt with "balanced force." I n sh ort, w hat we are discussingis the difference between thought and dogma.

It m igh t of course be aesthetically ab hor ren t to discover gal-lant admirals and airmen discussing their common problems,or the occasional amiable debates between them, in terms like"marginal utility," "diminishing returns," or < 6opportunitycosts." It happens, incidentally, to be quite abhorrent to thisw riter to find himself inad vertently pleading for a jargon in an ydiscipline, thou gh in this insta nce the re is no da nge r of cor-rupting the pu re ; the mil itary already have a quite substantialjargon of the ir own. B u t th e adva ntag e of using symbols whichare tied to well-thought-out form ulations has a t least two ad-vantages besides the obvious one of providing a sh ort-h and forintra-discipline communication: first , i t may help to assureth a t the fun da m en tals of a problem will not be overlooked, andsecondly, it m ay offer economies in th e process of think ing th eproblem through.T o persuade oneself th a t the fundam entals can be overlookedin a strategic problem dealing with the composition or bal-ancing of forces, one need only stu dy the argum ents propo unde dby both sides in the recent inter-service controversy over thesuper-aircraft-carrier, the United S ta tes . Sec retary Louis John-son's decision of April 23, 1949 to abandon construction of thevessel seems to have been based o n considerations of dubiousrelevancy, to say the least. It could scarcely have been other-wise, inasmuch as the issue was quite openly a jurisdictionaldispute. The Air Force was exercised over an attempted inva-sion by another service of what it regarded as its exclusive do-m ain , strate gic bombing. S uch a consideration is of course a


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482 WORLD POLITICSparison with its rough equivalent (performance-wise) of long-range, land-based aircraft must vary with the number of suchaircraft and of such carriers already in hand or planned forprocurement. As numbers were added to either type (e.g.,B-36s), the onset of diminishing returns in further additionsto that type would involve an increase in the relative value ofthe favorable qualities distinctive to the other type (carrier-aircraft team). At what point, if ever, that increase would besufficient to cause us to shift production resources from the for-mer type to the latter would be a question for which our re-search would seek answers. But to ask such questions is to putthe issues of balanced force generally, and of B-36s versuslarge carriers in particular, on a rational and meaningful plane-which is to say an entirely different plane from the one onwhich such issues have thus far been fought out.One thing is certain-that the cost of conducting such a re-search would amount to considerably less than the cost of oneB-36, let alone one carrier. Whether the armed services havewithin their own ranks personnel who are equipped to ask theproper questions and to direct the relevant research is anothermatter. Of two things this writer is convinced: that they canhave persons so equipped if they want to, and that they shouldwant to.We do, to be sure, find the services under the pressure ofevents acting as though they intuitively perceived the con-siderations involved in the principle of marginal utility. Thatis to be expected, since the principle reflects only a relativelymodest refinement of common sense. For example, during 1944the Navy severely cut back its production of submarines notbecause those in service in the Pacific had failed but becausethey had been too successful. They had sunk so many Japaneseships that they were having difficulties finding new targets.The situation for submarines was described as one of "satura-tion." But the trouble with intuitive perception in lieu of con-ceptual understanding is that it is likely to be tardy and incom-plete. Prior to our entry into World War 11, the rough ruleof thumb method of thinking implied by the word "saturation"was applied quite disastrously to another problem: how muchantiaircraft armament should be installed on our combatant


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483TRATEGY AS A SCIENCEships? The reasoning was entirely in terms of the minimumnumber of guns necessary to "cover" with defensive fire each ofthe ship's quadrants. The governing dogma was that offensivestrength should not be sacrificed for greater defensive strength.The result was that our battleships on the day of Pearl Harborwere virtually naked with respect to antiaircraft defenses.15 Andit was not until more than a year after that attack that theprinciple was finally adopted that the amount of antiaircraftarmament to be installed on an existing ship was to be limitedonly by the amount it was physically capable of carrying andservicing, and in order to raise that level a good deal of tophamper was removed. What was belatedly discovered, in otherwords, was that long after the four quadrants of the ship were6.6 covered," the marginal utility of another antiaircraft gun re-mained much higher than the marginal utility of many otheritems of comparable weight or space consumption (includingempty space itself) to be found on the decks of our warships.

There is of course a great hurdle between clear understandingof the principles applicable to a problem and the practicalresolution of that problem. The antiaircraft problem just dis-cussed might not have been solved any better on the basis ofmarginal utility theory-if the valuation applied to each anti-aircraft gun had remained inordinately low-than it actuallywas in the absence of such theory. And we do frequently en-counter that intuitive perception which effectively replaces con-ceptual understanding. But so frequently we do not. Besides,there is a great practical difference between that rule of thumbwhich is recognized to be the optimum feasible realization ofcorrect theory and that much more common species of rule ofthumb which simply replaces the effort of theorizing.Moreover, one cannot forbear to add that some of the moreglaring errors of our recent military history could not have beenperpetrated by intelligent men who were equipped with even a

l5T h e explanation frequently offered by Na vy spokesmen d uring an d since t he war, tha tour gross deficiencies in naval antia ircra ft arm am ent a t the tim e in question was d ue chieflyto th e unwillingness of Congress to app rop riate sufficient funds to t he purpose, seems not t cwithstand the test of the record. I can find little evidence that the Navy as a whole-an d particularly the Bureau of Ships-came anywh ere near predicting the needs of the warin th at categ ory of weapons, or th at an y concerted effort was ma de to persu ade Congressof the urgency of the problem. Certainly one can find l i t t le to indicate that the Navy waseager to sacrifice other, less necessary things accorded it by Congress in order to remedythi s g laring deficiency.


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484 WORLD POLITICSrnodicum of theory. To tarry a moment longer with our "margi-nal utility" concept but t o shift now to an operational examplealready alluded to above: could Admiral Halsey possibly havefollowed the "Don't divide the fleet doctrine" to the prepos-terous length of hurling ninety ships against sixteen at LeyteGulf (the Japanese sixteen also being greatly inferior individ-ually to their American counterparts) if he had had any inklingat all of marginal utility thinking? He had other and pressingtasks in hand besides the pursuit of the northernmost Japaneseforce, and surely many of those ninety ships, especially the newbattleships, would have had a far greater utility on those othertasks-which were in fact completely ignored-than they couldpossibly have on that pursuit. We know that Halsey appliedthe doctrines he had been taught. It was not that he had failedhis teachers but that they had failed to teach him much thatcould genuinely assist him.But examples could be piled on indefinitely. Nor can one per-mit the inference that a single concept borrowed from eco-nomics could magically resolve the strategic problems whichconfront us. I t does happen to be the conviction of this writerthat a substantial part of economic theory could be very profit-ably adapted to strategic analysis, including analysis of opera-tional plans, and that those responsible for such analysis woulddo well to acquaint themselves with that theory-but even thatis not the essential issue. Whether this or that concept can beapplied with profit is something which interests us only in pass-ing. It is in the field of methodology that a science like economicshas most to contribute, and the point which it is the whole pur-pose of this article to bring home is that what is needed in theapproach to strategic problems is g e n u in e a n a l y t i c a l method.Formerly the need for it was not great, but, apart from therapidly increasing complexity of the problem, the magnitudeof disaster which might result from military error today bearsno relation to situations of the past.For evidence of the primitive development of strategic theory,i t is not necessary to compose an ideal model of what can be asa contrast to what is. Historically, we have the case of Mahanas Exhibit A. The tremendous impact (furthered, it should benoticed, by the active interest of various highly placed civilians)


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485TRATEGY AS A SCIENCEof Mahan's writings upon the naval branch of the calling canbe explained only, as the French strategist Admiral Castex ex-plained it , by the fact th a t those writings filled "a vacuum ." A ndsince Mahan's theories were almost without exception gleanedfrom studious observation of the practice (and to some extentth e w riting s) of th e grea t na val leaders of a hu nd red y ears a n dmore before his time, there is a rather persistent vacuum toaccou nt for. M a h a n was, as a m at ter of fact, in some essentialrespects behind his own times. 'Tertainly he could not becalled system atic. B u t he stood before his colleagues as on e wh oseemed to know th e purpose for which w arships were built , a ndhe carried all before him. N or is it altogether irrelevant to poin tout that Mahan in his maturity fel t obliged to regard himselfas a misfit in th e nav al profession, an d t ha t the service in whichhe foun d himself p u t itself to few pains to en courag e the devel-op m en t of his exceptional an d indeed an om alous talents."Mo reover, M ah an has remained, for the United Sta tes Nav yat least , an isolated phenomenon. The groundwork which helaid fo r w ha t m igh t have become a science of n ava l str ateg y wasnever systematically developed by the profession. I n th e thir ty-five years since his death-years of ove rwhelming technolog icalan d political change-the service from which he spr ang has n o tproduced his successor. Mahan's endowment was a high andrare one, to be sure, b u t his genius was h ardly so resplendentas to paralyze any incipient will to emulate . There can be nodoubt th a t the failure to develop w hat was so auspiciously begunl6For example, his dogmatic insistence that the guerre de course (commerce raiding)could no t be "by itself alone decisive of g reat issues" clearly contrib uted to th e alnlostuniversal failure prior to World War I to a nticip ate the strategic significance of th esubmarine as a commerce destroyer. The submarine had become before Mahan's deathin all essential respects the instrument it is today, but in any case his assertion wasillogical on the face of it. Whether commerce destruction against a nation likeGreat Britain could be "decisive of great issues" depended entirely on the scale onwhich i t could be carried o ut. Th e submarine and later th e airplane m ade i t possibleto ca rry it ou t o n a large scale even un de r conditions of gross surface inferiority.

Sce my Sea POW PTn tlte M acltine Age, pp. 302-4, 328-32; also m y Guide t o Naval Strategy,Princeton, Princeton University Press, 3rd ed., 1944, pp. 137-40. T h e point rem ainsinteresting today because comparable considerations apply to the current controversyon th e decisiveness of strategic bombing, especially with th e atomic bom b.l7See William E. Livezey, Mahan on Sea Power , Norman, University of OklahomaPress, 1947, chap. 1. hlahan's elevation after ret irement to Rear-Admiral had, i t shouldbe noticed, not hing to d o with his services to his cou ntry an d his profession as a th ink erand writer. He was promoted along with every other captain on the retired l is t whohad lived long enough to be a veteran of th e Civil War.


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486 WORLD POLITICShas h ad its effects in th e realm of strateg ic an d policy decisionon naval mat ters .

N or is th e Na vy alone in this regard. A ir power is still young,but it is certainly not new. Yet it is not possible to find in anylanguage a treatise which explores in discerning and relativelyobjective fashion th e role of air power in w ar, the factors gov-erning its potentialities and limitations, its relation to otherarms, and the chief considerations affecting its mode of opera-t ion. Sea power has a t least had i ts Mahan; the l i te ra ture ofair power is all fragm ents a nd polemics. T h a t the fac t is reflectedin the decision-making process can no doubt be demonstrated.I t would indeed be am azing if it were no t so reflected.Having sa id thus much, I am now obliged t o point to avail-able remedies. T h e term "available" m ust perhaps be stretcheda bit, because we are dealing fundamentally with a conflict invalue system s. T h e profession of arm s requires inevitably asubo rdination of ration al to rom antic values. Lo yalty a nd devo-tion to heroism are necessarily the hallmark of the calling.Action, decisiveness, and boldness are idealized, though fewprofessions have succeeded so well in building up bureaucraticinhibitions t o their realization. T h e qualities bred in to the seniorm ilitary officer by his institutional env ironm ent thus includereal and relatively rare virtues, but they also include an anti-theoretical bias which is in fact anti-intellectual. His talents,often real and pronounced, are undeveloped on the side ofdialectics. T h e emph asis is on th e so-called "practical," an d oncommand, which is to say administration. "One learns bydoing" is one of his favori te axiom s ; whatever requires a differ-en t app roac h t o th e learn ing process-reflection, for example-is suspect.'%nd in his eagerness t o be doing, he does throu gh-out his career a fantastically large amount of work of a sortwhich contributes nothing to his greater understanding of hisa rt even o n th e technical level.H is tra in in g a t one of th e various wa r colleges-which hereaches a t ab ou t th e age of thirty-five to forty-is looked uponas an interlude in the more active phases of his career. Thecourses ther e are of survey typ e an d of relatively sho rt du rat io n.

Shakespeare. in introducing the dra matic c o n m s t to Ham let , uses the soldier , Fort in-bras.


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487TRATEGY AS A S CI EN CET h e pressure upon the stud ent is intense, bu t, part ly for th atreason, there is little encouragement to what one might callrum ina tion , certainly not of a type which migh t carry over in toth e sub seq uen t phases of his active d u ty .At present the Mili tary Establishment operates three warcolleges: the Naval War College at Newport , Rhode Island,the Air W a r College a t Maxwell F ield , Alaba ma, an d th eNational W ar College a t Washington, D. C. T he Army has nowar college toda y ( th e N ationa l W ar College having taken overthe plant formerly used for th a t purp ose) , b ut some attentionis given to strategic problems at the Command and GeneralStaff School at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. At none of theseinstitutions is the course which incorporates strategy of longerth an eight to ten m onths du ration, and th e portion of th e courseactually devoted to strategy may be relatively small. I t mustbe observed that the National War College provides a type oftrain ing which is somew hat different from t h a t of the other tw ocolleges. It devotes m ore atte ntio n to politics and internation alrelations, and the half of the course given over to militarystudies surveys the problems of all three services rather thanof only one.T he se facts in themselves suggest an avenu e of approac h ifreform is seriously to be furthe red . W e need to m ake of ou rwar colleges genuine graduate schools in method and durationof train ing . T h e m ilita ry staffs shou ld be chosen for the specialattainments of their members in the several fields of strategicanalysis ( a process which m u st a w ait develop m ent of a corpsof officers possessing the requisite competences), and at leastfor the m ore advanced courses (i.e., the second an d third yearsof a system which does not yet exist) , the students should beselected according to standards which give due weight to theintellectual purpose of th e institu tion . I t would also be desirableto reach down into younger age levels than are presently to befound at the war colleges. Such reform in itself would reallyno t be enough-some consideration would have to be given th ewhole basis of promotion, the system of duty assignments, andperhaps also methods of training at the mili tary and navalacademies-but it would be an im po rtan t st art .The mili tary will object that i t is not their purpose to train


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488 WORLD POLITICSscholars, th a t there are othe r besides in tellec tual qualities neces-sary in a mil i tary leader, and that their needs in s trategicplanners are after all very limited. They are of course right.The successful military leader must have something besides agood mind' an d a good education in s trategy. B ut th at is onlyto say that the mil i tary cal l ing is more exacting than others .I n w hat oth er professiop does th e individual affect or con troldirectly not only the lives of thousands of his fellow citizensbut also the dest iny of the national community and perhapsalso of w estern civilization as we know i t ? A naly tical acu m enneed n ot be emphasized to th e exclusion of those o the r qualities(i.e., "leadership," e t al.), but it has a long way to go to gainconsideration even comparable to the latter.So far as concerns the limited needs of the Military Estab-lishment for strategic planners, those needs may not be aslimited as appears on the surface. If some of those problemswere seriously thought through which are now handled by aprocess often called "m ature judgment," there mig ht quicklydevelop a mark ed sho rtag e of think ers. I n a ny case, we probablyhave here as in other branches of the m ilita ry a r t a field forspecialists who are selected a nd tr aine d for the specialty. T h u sfa r we have h ad specialization in everything else. A nd regard-less of how limited was the actual need in such special skillsas strategic analysis, we should have to have a respectably bro adbase for selecting those called to the task and an adequatemeans of tra inin g them .

Brodie Strategy as a Science

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