Comprehension

The persistent patterns in the way nations fight reflect their cultural and historical traditions and deeply rooted attitudes that collectively make up their strategic culture. These patterns provide insights that go beyond what can be learnt by just comparing armaments and divisions. In Vietnam War, the strategic tradition of the United States called for forcing the enemy to fight a massed battle in an open area, where superior American weapons would prevail. The United States was trying to re-fight World War II in the jungles of Southeast Asia, against an enemy with no intention of doing so.

Some British military historian’s describe the Asian way of war as one indirect attacks, avoiding frontal attacks meant overpower an opponent. This traces back to Asian history and geography: the great distances and harsh terrain have often made it difficult to execute the sort of open field clashes allowed by the flat terrain and relatively compact size of Europe. A very different strategic tradition arose in Asia.

The bow and arrow were metaphors for an Eastern way, of war, by its nature, he arrow is an indirect weapon. Fired from a distance of hundred yards, it does not necessitate immediate physical contact with the enemy. Thus, it can be fired from hidden positions. When from behind a ridge, the barrage seems to come out from classical strategic writings of the East. The 2,000 years’ worth of Chinese writings on war constitutes the most subtle writings on the subject in any language. Not until clausewitz, did the West produce a strategic theorist to match the sophistication of Sun-tzu, whose Art of war was written 2,300 years earlier.

In Sun-tzu and other Chinese writings, the highest achievement of arms is to defeat an adversary without fighting. He wrote: “ To win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the supreme excellence.” Actual combat is just one among many means towards the goal of subbuing an adversary. War contains too many surprises to be a first resort. It can lead to ruinous losses, as has been seen time and again. It can have the unwanted effect of inspiring heroic efforts in an enemy, as the United States learned in Vietnam, and as the Japanese found out after Pearl Harbour.

Aware if the uncertainties of a military campaign, Sun- tzu advocated war only after the most through preparations. Even then it should be quick and clean. Ideally, the army is just an instrument to deal the final blow to an enemy already weakened by isolation, poor morale, and disunity. Ever since Sun-tzu, the Chinese have been seen as masters of subtlety who take measured actions to manipulate an adversary without his knowledge. The dividing line between war and peace can be obscure. Low level violence often is the back drop to a large strategic campaign. The unwitting victim, focused on the day to day events, never realizes what’s happening to him until it’s too late. History holds many examples. The mobile army of the United states was designed to fight on the plains of Europe, where it could quickly move unhindered from one spot to the next. The jungle did more than make quick movement impossible: broken down into smaller units and scattered in isolated basses, US forces were deprived of the feeling of support and protection that ordinarily comes from being part of a big army.

The isolation of US troops in Vietnam was not just a logistical detail, something that could be overcome by, for instance, bringing in reinforcements by helicopter. In a big army reinforcements are readily available. It was Napoleon who realized the extraordinary effects on morale that come form being a part of a larger formation. Just the knowledge of it lowers the soldier’s fear and increases his aggressiveness. In the jungle and on isolate bases, this feeling was remove. The thick vegetation slowed down the reinforcements and made it difficult to find stranded units. Soldiers felt they were on their own.

More important, by altering the way the war was fought, the Viet Cong stripped the united States of its belief in the inevitability of victory, as it had done to the French before them. Morale was high when these armies first went to Vietnam. Only after many years of debilitating and demoralizing fighting did Hanoi launch its decisive attacks, at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 and against Saigon in 1975. It should be recalled that in the final push to victory the North Vietnamese abandoned their jungle guerrilla tactics completely, committing their entire army of twenty divisions to pushing the South Vietnamese into collapse. This final battle with the enemy’s army all in one place, was the one that the United States had desperately wanted to fight in 1965. When it did come out in to the open in 1975, Washington had already withdrawn its forces and there was no possibility of re-intervention.

The Japanese early in World War II used a modern form of the indirect attack one that relied on stealth and surprise for its effect. At Pearl Harbour, in the Philippines, and in Southeast Asia, stealth and surprise were attained by sailing under radio silence so that the navy’s movements could not be tracked moving troops aboard ships into southeast Asia made it appear that the Japanese army was also “ invisible” attacks against Hawaii and Singapore seemed, to the American and British defenders, to come from nowhere. In Indonesia and the Philippines the Japanese attack was even faster the German blitz against France in the west.

The greatest military surprises in American history have all been in Asia. Surely there is something going on there beyond the purely technical difficulties of detecting enemy movement Pearl Harbour, the Chinese intervention in Korea, and was greatly improved after each surprise, but with no noticeable improvement in the American ability to foresee or prepare what would happen next. There is a cultural divide here, not just a technical one. Even when it was possible to track an army with intelligence satellites, as when Iraq invaded Kuwait or when Syria and Egypt attacked Israel, surprise was achieved, the United states was stunned by Iraq’s attack on Kuwait even though it had satellite pictures of Iraqi troops massing at the border.

The exception proves the point that cultural differences obscure the west’s understanding of Asian behaviour was the soviet Union’s 1979 invasion of Afghanistan. This was fully anticipated and understood advance. There was no surprise because the United States understood Moscow’s world view and thinking. It could anticipate Soviet action almost as well as the Soviets themselves, because the Soviet Union was really a Western country.

The difference between the Eastern and the Western way of war is striking. The West’s great strategic writer, Clausewitz, linked war to politics, as did Sun-tzu. Both were opponents of militarism, of turning war over to the generals. But there all similarity ends. Clausewitz wrote that the way to achieve a large political purpose is through destruction of the enemy’s army. After observing Napoleon conquer Europe by smashing enemy armies to bits, Clausewitz made his famous remark in On War (1932) that combat is the continuation of politics by violent means. Morale and unity are important, But they should be harnessed for the ultimate battle. If the Eastern way of war is embodied by the stealthy archer, the metaphorical Western counterpart is the swordsman charging forward, seeking a decisive showdown eager to administer the blow that will obliterate the enemy once and for all. In this view, war proceeds along a fixed course and occupies a finite extent of time, like a play in three acts with a beginning, a middle, and an end. The final scene, decides the issue for good.

When things don’t work out quite this way, the western military mind feels tremendous frustration. Sun-tzu’s great disciples, Mao Zedong and Ho Chi Minh, are respected in Asia for their clever use of indirection and deception to achieve and advantage over stronger adversaries. But in the west their approach is seen as underhanded and devious. To the American strategic mind, the Viet Cong guerrilla did not fight fairly . He should have come out into the open and fought like a man, instead of hiding in the jungle and sneaking around like a cat in the night

CAT/1999

Question . 218

According to the author, the greatest military surprises in American history have been in Asia because