Antoine Henri Jomini

The concept of war as a static and unchanging occurrence is an outdated and dangerous miscalculation. More accurately, war is a fluidic, evolving and shifting phenomenon constantly reinventing itself, rendering stagnant, inflexible principles potentially disastrous. Consequently, as students of war and future players in this transforming theatre, the study of eras of significant development is an extremely relevant pursuit. Recognizing the need for adaptation and the creation of doctrine is now a prerequisite for any effective modern commander. War is unpredictable in nature and particularly so in current theatres of operation, in which change is rapid

Clausewitz’s attack of enemy centers of gravity and Sun Tzu’s prioritization of attack of important elements of national power provide contrasting approaches to the development of effective strategy. These contrasts are reflections of each author’s perspective on how war should be waged, the proper use of force, their definitions of the ideal victory and how best to achieve that victory as well as their methodologies,

This paper will examine the Battle of Fredericksburg through the research of analytical papers, historical articles and technical reports by conducting the four steps of battle analysis. It will analyze the effects of the use and dismissal of intelligence assets and disciplines when applied to the planning of a territorial battle campaign. Using terrain analysis it will discuss how the choice of advantageous terrain can sway the outcome of a battle. It will also discuss how timing and momentum can be critical to our overall military planning. Finally, it will present an alternative outcome to the battle by establishing the utilization of intelligence assets available to both commanding generals and how altering critical decision points would have presented a significantly different result.

Bloch studied about war for approximately fourteen years before materializing his researches into the form of a book. Eventually, his study came out in 1899 but Bloch would never get the opportunity to observe his ideas being validated by the two world wars. An entrepreneur and a civilian writer, Jean de Bloch's theory of war has proven viable throughout the years precisely because it witnessed its actualization within the two world wars. His analysis on military strategies is all time relevant because it explores war from standout points that indeed remain constant no matter the circumstances or the time of its emergence.

Carl Von Clausewitz and Helmuth Moltke the Elder were both practitioners and theorists of the war art in the 19th century. Their military thoughts on war’s character and its dynamics have influenced the later militaries in the conduct of war. Particularly, the Clausewitzian concept of the “culminating point of victory” and the Moltke’s principle of “Auftragstaktik”, or mission type tactics by a decentralized command were implemented and culminated in the battlefield of World War II. Moreover, today, the US Army has adopted both concepts in its latest refined “AirLand Battle” doctrine recognizing their importance in the operational art of modern warfare.

Clausewitz who was convinced that no theory of war could be taken seriously unless it included the psychology of commanders and soldiers and their relations to one another (Peter Paret, Napoleon and the Revolution in War, pg. 134). The human factor within the nature of war is the most complex and difficult to predict a sure outcome without addressing psychological state of the enemy and environment in with you are about to conduct operations. Boyd integrates the key ideas of two primary theorists, Sun Tzu and Carl von Clausewitz, and hypothesizes that making sense of one’s environment, making military decisions, and acting on those decisions is a respective, competitive process (OODA loop) in which one seeks to make faster and better decisions than one’s adversary, overwhelming his ability to make sense of his environment and cope with change. (Module 3, John Boyd and A Discourse on Winning and Losing, pg. 6). This thought process is relevant today through our military war games, operation plans, and TDG’s providing an opportunity for multiple levels of outcome based scenarios fundamentally rooted in understanding the

At age nineteen, Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert Motier, commonly known as Marquis de Lafayette, abandoned his high social class in France and became a major General in the United States continental army. Lafayette had developed a strong relationship with George Washington, creating a friendship that would last a lifetime. He undeniably was a key component in securing the victory of the American Revolution. Marquis de Lafayette was one of the most successful leaders during the American Revolutionary War.

In conclusion, The American Way of War is an iconic book filled with the glorious moments of traditional strategic warfare. Weigley’s work was great on focusing purely on the details of American strategy. Weigley also did a good job in keeping it interesting knowing that it would be pretty difficult with this

The notion of an American way of war informs how scholars, policymakers, and strategists understand how Americans fight. A way of war—defined as a society’s cultural preferences for waging war—is not static. Change can occur as a result of important cultural events, often in the form of traumatic experiences or major social transformations. A way of war is therefore the malleable product of culturally significant past experiences. Reflecting several underlying cultural ideals, the current American way of war consists of three primary tenets—the desire for moral clarity, the primacy of technology, and the centrality of scientific management systems—which combine to create a preference for decisive, large-scale conventional wars with clear objectives and an aversion to morally ambiguous low-intensity conflicts that is relevant to planners because it helps them address American strategic vulnerabilities.

This book consisted of five large chapters. Each chapter was about a small group of people who played a significant role in the victory of World War 2. The names of the chapters are: How To Get Convoys Safely Across The Atlantic, How To Win Command Of The Air, How To Stop A Blitzkrieg, How To Seize An Enemy-Held Shore, and How To Defeat The “Tyranny Of Distance.” Most of the events that are described in this book occurred between the Casablanca Conference of January 1943 and July 1944.

There are no universal theories to explain the true nature and character of war, and any war theories are not a fact or absolute truth. All strategic principles are dynamic and contextual, so “every age had its own kind of war, its own limiting conditions, and its own peculiar preconceptions.” The battlefield environment of the 21st century will be the volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous, and nature of war will be completely different because of the Revolution in Military Affairs. Highly advance communication and information technologies, a dramatic increase in computing capabilities, developed of precision munitions, dominant air and space power ‘war could be waged by the projection of

Sun Tzu understood the nature of war as “the province of life or death,” and a “matter of vital importance to the state.”1 I agree. In my own experience, war awakens your primordial instincts and strips you of your self-rationalizations. Sun Tzu defined the character of war when he wrote, “water has no constant form, there are in war no constant conditions.”2 Accordingly, Sun Tzu’s principals of war offer a framework adequate to explain the nature and character of 21st century warfare, which I rationalize as a near-continuous battle of ideologies fought through asymmetric means to advance the values and interests of state and non-state actors.

Giulio Douhet, in his seminal treatise on air power titled The Command of the Air, argued, “A man who wants to make a good instrument must first have a precise understanding of what the instrument is to be used for; and he who intends to build a good instrument of war must first ask himself what the next war will be like.” The United States (US) military establishment has been asking itself this exact question for hundreds of years, in an attempt to be better postured for the future. From the Civil War, through the American Indian Wars, and up until World War II (WWII) the American military’s way of war consisted of fighting traditional, or conventional, wars focused on total annihilation of an enemy. Since that time, there has been a gradual shift from the traditional framework towards one that can properly address non-traditional, or irregular wars. While the US maintains a capability to conduct conventional warfare, the preponderance of operations where the US military has been engaged since WWII have been irregular wars. Therefore, this question articulated by Douhet, as to understanding the character of the next war in order to properly plan, train, and equip, is certainly germane to the current discussion of regular war versus irregular war. In today’s fiscally constrained environment, the questions remains, which will dominate the future and therefore, garner further funding and priority. Based on the current threats and the US role as a superpower, the US

This essay intends to define and give an overview of the ‘Principles of War', the philosophers that coined these principles and with examples from the various countries that used and have their own perspectives on the ‘Principles of War'.

While “The Art of War” was written by Sun Tzu during the 6th century B.C., long before the colonization of the Americas, the onslaught of the Crusades, and before the Persian Wars of around 490 B.C., it remains relevant to this day. There is also strong evidence that the work inspired Napoleon and was used in the planning of Operation Desert Storm. “The Art of War” has withstood the sands of time due to its simplistic approach, and its applicability to non-military strategies. “The Art of War“, interpreted by Gerald, A. Michaelson, as well as other authors, use Sun Tzu’s timeless strategies and apply them to the modern day corporate world.