The Existence of the Operational Level of War, For and Against
I was involved in a discussion elsewhere regarding the excellent and thought provoking article at SWJ by General Huba Wass de Czege on operation art, design and thinking:
Operational Art is Not a Level of War
Strongly recommend you read the article first. My remarks follow, slightly revised:
I have only read a few pieces by General Wass de Czege, those published at SWJ but the caliber of the general’s self-reflective, professional, thinking is something we should strive to emulate.
Here is what seems to be the crtical point in his article, after which I have a comment:
“We doctrine writers of the 1980’s inserted operational art as a mid-level of war between tactics and strategy – making it the art of translating the governing strategy into the implementing tactics of the “tactical echelons.” And thus, making operational art the province of “campaigning” generals. Because of the way I was conditioned to think then, that strategy was the business of the upper echelons and tactics the business of the lower ones, I miss-translated an idea borrowed from Soviet doctrine about the mediation between strategy and tactics. I was then a product of indoctrination in the US Army’s War and Command and Staff Colleges. These institutions, and the business schools of the time, taught based on the industrial age organizational model of the head (where strategic decisions are made) and the rest of the body (where tactical decisions implement the strategy). I now believe that, without violating the historical meaning of the terms strategy and tactics, this is a much more useful and natural way to think of the relationship between tactics, strategy and operational art.
In fact, this allows one to close the conceptual gap between our bifurcated way of thinking about warfare between nation states and that between states and armed movements of any kind. It also helps do the same for the two tactical operating modes that have recently surfaced in new Army concepts – “combined arms maneuver” and “wide area security.”
Campaigning, another word for operational art, can occur at any scale, and in any milieu, as a close look at what our best company, battalion, and brigade commanders have been doing in Iraq and Afghanistan. “
I think maybe this should be qualified – re; operational art is not a “level”. It is a level of war and it is not at the same time.
The difference between the two I think is *how* we are employing the term: “Operational art” as a historical, taxonomic, description of how a military-political command structure has behaved/behaves as a warfighting institutional culture vs. methodologically how they *could* and *should* think about warfare and in turn behave at any “level”.
It is not surprising to me, thinking in terms of history, that Wass de Czege, where he wrote that he was in error, was drawing from Soviet examples. If we think about “operational art” as a “level of war” we are led to military powers where powerful ideological constraints systemically interfered with the “natural” clausewitzian connection between Policy and Strategy.
The USSR’s Red Army, from the early days of Commissar-Commander relationships in battle, through the Stalinist era to the more modern and restrained (i.e. non-murderous) controls of the Army’s Political Department and vetting security checks for promotion carried out jointly by the military, State Security and Party organs, created an atmosphere where deferral of political implications caused a) a segregation of an officer’s intellectual initiative to organizational and technical military questions and b) constructing military strategy and operational campaigns to at least nominally reflect Marxist-Leninist dogma and the Party line as a matter of necessity, and for a period, in an effort to try and avoid being physically liquidated.
Most of the Soviet Union’s most gifted military strategists and tacticians were unsuccessful in this regard and perished (ex. Svechin, Tukhachevskii, Blyukher). Arguably that left an institutional legacy in it’s wake that narrowed the conceptual framework with which Soviet Marshals and generals approached planning for war, including nuclear war.
Germany is another example, with the policy-strategy split favoring a professional military focus on operational art emerging as early as 1870 in tensions between Bismarck and Moltke over the war with France, growing worse during the Great War until during the Third Reich, a state of enforced paralysis occurs after 1942 on the Eastern Front. In theory, Hitler, who was his own war minister and commander-in-chief of the Army in addition to being the Supreme Commander, Fuhrer and Reich Chancellor, could (like Stalin) have resolved any contradictions or discordance between Policy and Strategy. Hitler deliberately chose not to do so and his paranoia led him to eventually limit even his field commander’s tactical flexibility (some generals, like Rommel, resisted this more effectively than others).
The US military, in my view, suffers a similar fixation. The reasons are very different – proper constitutional deference to civil authority coupled with a limited or absent capacity of most civilian political authorities to think in a complementary strategic fashion that would allow them to best guide their military commanders in jointly constructing a seamless bridge between policy-strategy-operational campaign. Another reason, though I do not want to go into it here, is a cultural reaction to the experience of the Vietnam War that became embedded in the officer corps during the shift to the AVF starting with the Nixon administration.
Tom Ricks had a very interesting post at Best Defense while back on the Hew Strachan article in which Ricks argued against the existence of an operational level of war, but as we are not discussing platonic forms, militaries are at whatever “level” of war for which their culture institutionally encourages officers to think about and plan. So in that sense, Wass de Czege is absolutely correct – they can and should be thinking across the whole range and not in “slots”. However, if they don’t do what he suggests and if they do predominantly focus on one “level” as most of their thinking and planning, be it tactics, operations, strategy. Then that level “exists”, it leaves a bureaucratic “trail”, grows a structure to execute it and will be put into practice during a war – at least initially until events force a change of practice from below (the field) or above ( political leaders).
March 16th, 2011 at 6:49 pm
I’m finishing up Dr. James J. Schneider’s The Structure of Strategic Revolution: Total War and the Roots of the Soviet Warfare State, another selection from the Adam Elkus Complete Emporium of Obscure Military Theory™. Schneider argues that a distinct operational level of war first emerged in the latter half of the American Civil War as a delayed response to the Industrial Revolution and that the origins of Soviet operational thought emerged from Russian studies of the American Civil War written in the late Tsarist era. Having read A.A. Svechin myself, he seemed to be laboring under the necessity of making his pre-Bolshevik military ideas conform to dialectical materialism but other critical fathers of Soviet operational theory like Frunze, Tukhachevsky, and Triandafillov were enthusiastic commies who were quite mindful and even involved in policy. . Schneider also explores one overlooked contributor to Russian operational theory: J. V. Stalin. Stalin’s ideas were formed by his own extensive readings of history and military thought as well as his experiences during the Russian Civil War. Stalin’s tutor was the usually overlooked Boris Shaposhnikov, who survived the Great Purge and was largely responsible for cleaning up after it. Though Shaposhnikov was not particularly political like Tukhachevsky, his main work Mozg Armii, a favorite of Stalin’s, argued for intense political involvement by the general staff while always remaining subordinate to political considerations like good Clausewitzians. . Russian development of operational theory seems to have been driven by 1) the need for a label for what the belligerents did during World War I when they fully mobilized their civilian rear as well as their military front into a de facto whole (they chose strategy) 2) a recognition that the advance of social capacity with the onset of the Industrial and Information Revolutions had created a need for coordinating unprecedented masses of man and material towards a common end in the same way tactics used to do on individual battlefields 3) the wide expanse of Russia itself which required thinking in much more expansive ways than someone bound to the narrow confines of the North European Plain needed. It solved specific Soviet needs at the time and probably has useful ideas for American strategy but the wholesale adoption of Russian operational theory by the U.S. military seems to have been haphazard and juvenile. Like the blues, operational art may only look new because foreigners are reimporting it. . A recent talk by Lawrence Freedman was quite scathing about the modern tendency to over complicate military theory with its unnecessary addition of new levels of war like operations and grand strategy that serve to obscure rather than clarify. Freedman’s definition of strategy as "the creation of power" skips over the Kennane nerd’s obsession with convoluted and complicated strategic and tactical ideas and points out that sometimes strategy is maximizing the little power you have left in a system of ad-hoc expedients and hoping for the best in spite of rationality like Churchill did in 1940. Human thought is ultimately reductionist and military theory should be as simple as possible but no simpler while heading the truth of Crabtree’s bludgeon: No set of mutually inconsistent observations can exist for which some human intellect cannot conceive a coherent explanation, however complicated.
March 17th, 2011 at 4:22 am
Hi JF,
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"another selection from the Adam Elkus Complete Emporium of Obscure Military Theory™."
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I am glad this was finally trademarked.
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"Schneider argues that a distinct operational level of war first emerged in the latter half of the American Civil War as a delayed response to the Industrial Revolution and that the origins of Soviet operational thought emerged from Russian studies of the American Civil War written in the late Tsarist era."
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An intriguing argument and plausible until you get to the part about the Tsarist Russian MoD conducting studies of anything non-Prussian. I’d really like to see evidence of that as I know the Russian military bureaucracy under Alex II, Alex III and Nicky II was F***ked in a cocked hat to say the least. Maybe one or two visionaries…
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"Having read A.A. Svechin myself, he seemed to be laboring under the necessity of making his pre-Bolshevik military ideas conform to dialectical materialism but other critical fathers of Soviet operational theory like Frunze, Tukhachevsky, and Triandafillov were enthusiastic commies who were quite mindful and even involved in policy"
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I need to read Svechin. Frunze was a revolutionary as much as a military thinker but was probably medically murdered on Stalin’s orders. Triandifillove died in a "plane crash". Tukhachevskii was executed. A truly talented strategist in Stalin’s Russia would not let on that they were a talented strategist ( maybe this explains Shaposhnikov, whom I had heard of more as a henchman).
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The officer corps was so thoroughly terrorized, that it was unable to function effectively 1940 -1942. It gained some breathing space partly due to courageous and stubborn general officers like Zhukov and partly because Stalin learned on the job to become a better supreme commander by 1944-45 than he had been in 1940-1942 and that not all military considerations were evidence of "wrecking" ( he also engaged in a game of playing Beria off against Abukumov in the security organs, Abukumov got SMERSH, Beria retained the domestic NKVD empire, war production and atomic weapons research)
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") the need for a label for what the belligerents did during World War I when they fully mobilized their civilian rear as well as their military front into a de facto whole (they chose strategy) "
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Ludendorff called it Total War.
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"It solved specific Soviet needs at the time and probably has useful ideas for American strategy but the wholesale adoption of Russian operational theory by the U.S. military seems to have been haphazard and juvenile"
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I am not sure how well known the Soviet antecedents are, outside a narrow circle. Most of the RMA aficianados did not know it
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"Freedman’s definition of strategy as "the creation of power""
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I am inclined to view this definition warily. Would need to read the argument firsthand
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"Human thought is ultimately reductionist and military theory should be as simple as possible but no simpler "
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Sometimes simple is hard.
March 17th, 2011 at 12:39 pm
Nice catch Zen-
I’ll have to read Wass de Czege’s article.
A few quick thoughts though – I’ve been planning on writing a post on the Strachan article that Ricks mentioned. It’s quite good, but there are a few of points that could be clarified and/or expanded upon.
That the Red Army and other theorists were attempting to explain what had happened during the First World War is natural, that is in fact how strategic theory – as opposed to doctrinal speculation – develops, that is retrospectively.
Svechin is a significant Clausewitzian theorist and his concept of operations is not so easily discarded and it would be imo counter-productive to do so. Alone his concept of operations as opposed to "local battles" is worth its retention.
I wonder if the notion to discard "operational art" is not more due to the inability to confront uncomfortable political realities/incompetence in policy formulation, in other words the collapse of strategic thought in general which has been politically motivated . . .
March 18th, 2011 at 3:14 am
Gracias Seydlitz!
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Agreed.
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The general is right that it is not optimum to limit strategic thinking to one "level". That said, the historian in me knows very well that militaries develop cultures, institutions and career incentives to do exactly that and put ideas to the test on the battlefield. Especially during peacetime like Reichswehr under von Seeckt, the USMC under Al Gray, the US Army’s Ft. Benning Revolution under Marshall and so on. This is not a bad thing, New insights are generated – though I think there is a combination of retrospective analysis and speculation – how to extrapolate the lessons learned to a different scale or environment etc.
March 19th, 2011 at 3:10 pm
It’s worth remembering the historical antecedent for the "operational level of war" (or, as Napoleon’s Maison referred to it, "Grand Tactics").
Inserting an intermediate layer between tactics ("What you do when you’re doing something," according to chess grandmaster Nigel Short) and strategy ("What you do when you’re doing nothing," ibid.) was a consequence of a vastly expanded battlespace constrained by communications capabilities of the day.
Best case in point (which I used in my Culture of Defense Transformation lectures at U.S. Joint Forces Command) is Napoleon’s campaign at Jena-Austerlitz. The Grande Armee was more than 100,000 strong, with Corps spread over a 150-mile wide front. Since the fastest communications of the time (horse-mounted courier) could only propagate information at less than 200 miles per day, Napoleon was unable to maintain daily correspondence with his Corps commanders.
Therefore, Napoleon delegated to them the authority of the Maison for their daily orders. This is the essence of "Grand Tactics" — the authority of Corps-level commanders to act with the authority of Napoleon, based on strategic intent.
Jump ahead a century or so, when communications networks allow the near-instantaneous transmission of information, and "Grand Tactics" becomes superfluous….
In our modern day all-volunteer military, which must accommodate a certain level of careerism to ensure sufficient personnel depth at higher grades, the "Operational Level" nee "Grand Tactics" has become (IMHO) busy work for those staff officers between the junior officers and NCOs who "do something" and the senior leadership who plot the course of strategy.
March 20th, 2011 at 3:31 am
Hi Shane,
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" The Grande Armee was more than 100,000 strong, with Corps spread over a 150-mile wide front. Since the fastest communications of the time (horse-mounted courier) could only propagate information at less than 200 miles per day, Napoleon was unable to maintain daily correspondence with his Corps commanders.
Therefore, Napoleon delegated to them the authority of the Maison for their daily orders. This is the essence of "Grand Tactics" — the authority of Corps-level commanders to act with the authority of Napoleon, based on strategic intent."
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The sense of shared understanding of the commander’s intent that you described for Napoleon and his Marshals and generals ( before things went to hell in Russia) was also the "special sauce" of Robert E. Lee and his subordinates. When it works, when there’s an intuitive synchronicity in both planning and reaction, it really works. When that sense gets lost in translation, the wheels of a finely tuned military machine – the Grand Armee, the Army of Northern Virginia, the Wehrmacht – come completely off.
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"the "Operational Level" nee "Grand Tactics" has become (IMHO) busy work for those staff officers between the junior officers and NCOs who "do something" and the senior leadership who plot the course of strategy."
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I do not doubt that is the case. It does not have to be the case, particularly since we have had armies with operational excellence after the advent of the telegraph, radio and field telephone. Instantaneous communication used to sap initiative of subordinate commanders via micromanagement – faraway LTC to MG directing platoons and companies in Afghanistan in firefights is a poor use of resources and dangerous for the troops due to misreads of the situation.
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Operational art has value but ppl are getting carried away with it if the 6 part SWJ series is indicative. There’s some nuggets of value there but it comes enshrouded in a rhetorical mummery of French postmodernist philosophy. I don’t want to read fourteen paragraphs to find a point that can be made in two