*Ahmad Dzakirin
“Once Mc. Donald’s has 2,730 franchises, getting one more would weaken The Company.” (Luttwak in Carnegie Council)
The Roman proverb, “Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum”, the reversal logic that -in some ways- typically characterized the most western wars strategists from Napoleon, Jomini, Clausewitz, and Moltke, if you want to live in a peace so you have to prepare the war. The worst option can be –in turn- the best way to victory. War in its evilness has a great virtue to set up a peace and prevent from its continuation through destruction of material and moral resources of enemy forces, namely exhaustion. Meanwhile, the opposite direction that is pacified by an unrecognized state of non war will irrevocably give both belligerent parties an incentive of an endlessly protracted arms race. “The emotional inability to understand violence clearly and to use it resolutely (in self-defense) leads, in the long run, to far more violence and bloodshed than it avoids in the short run”.
More or less, it is we might capture from the book of Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace that- in a way- we can compare the diametrically different approach of many oriental war strategists like Sun Tzu or Mao in achieving their political objectives with much avoidance of war and less bloodshed. “All your battles are not the foremost excellence; to break the enemy’s resistance without fighting is the foremost excellence. Out of his mass-persecution within Revolution of Culture, Mao Zedong differentiated between politics and war. War is politics with bloodshed and politics is war without bloodshed
Highly-inspired by the tradition of Carl von Clausewitz, Edward Luttwak –a Senior Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a very influential conservative military consultant of US Department of State, Office of The Secretary of Defense and National Security Agency - makes a ‘brilliant’ framework about war and military strategy based on an in-depth research on any examples of very diverse theatres from ancient Rome, Barbarossa, and Pearl Harbor up to nowadays such as Operation in Kosovo. In his lately acclaimed and revised work, he elucidates the non-linear strategy level by level from grand strategy to tactic and operations. “The logic strategy seemed to unfold two dimensions: the horizontal contention of adversaries who seek to oppose, deflect and reverse each other’s moves and the vertical interplay of the different levels of conflict, technical, tactical and operational…..and it ends when the both dimensions are reached at the level of grand strategy.”.
At least, there are three principal propositions that he highlights to be taken concern by both the warriors (in the level of tactic) and the policy makers (in level of grand strategy). First,Second, the significance of two dimensions of strategy consists of the horizontal (political consideration and national interest) and vertical aspects (the tactical operation from the start level through theatre implementation. Third, all aspects of strategy must be implemented in a work of conjunction to achieve a victory.
The Strategy in Paradox of logic
The Strategy is discerned as a non linear, contradictory, and paradoxical logic that subverted the thoroughness of the realm strategy, greatly different with the characteristic of non-contradictory linear strategy that shaped in purportedly peaceful spheres and purposes in the absence of war such as “commerce, production and consumption, family relation and consensual government.” Violating all sort of common sense criteria, i.e. the short route is preferable than longer one, daylight is preferable to the confusion of night and long preparation prefers to hurried improvisation-is justified and even the bad option is necessarily taken to give the enemy an unexpected action that in turn diminish their ability to react properly. The paradoxical choice ‘surprise’ counts on the maneuver “to circumvent the greater strength of the enemy and to exploit his weakness by implementing the stage of secrecy and deception and the deliberate calculation of the cost of risk as well.” The element of surprise has led to the success of Japan ’s air raid in Pearl Harbor and the German Barbarossa Invasion of Soviet in 1941.
But the sake of surprise might lead to some loss of strength such as: the longer route irrevocably will tire the troops, exhaust the vehicles, and absorb more supplies in ground combat. In tactic and operation, the strict measure of secrecy constrains the effectiveness of line of command and prevents the joint of rehearsal by various units to encounter the possible change and the most dangerous, the organizational failure to implement the intended strategy due to the ordinary error, misunderstanding and mechanical breakdown. When the attempt is made to reduce the risk by any paradoxical action will even tend to increase the organizational risk and the overall actions turn into complexity and overextension. Such problematic options can be found in –for examples-the bloodiest defeat of French Army to achieve the surprise in Nivelle offensive in WWI and German defeat in Battle of Kursk, 1943 and, the failure of US Desert One operation to rescue the hostages in 1980.
The other phenomenon of paradoxical logic in war is ‘culmination and reversal’. The army that reaches victory by surprise and improvisation tends to continue the war beyond the culminating point of success that lead to reversal and eventually collapse. The failure of Napoleon and Hitler can be at best described by their mistakes to overshoot the culminating points. The culminating point applies either in the level of strategy or tactical level. The defeat in the enemy’s perspective is always a better teacher and it evokes the responses of the neutral third parties toward the victor as well. They will be more concerned about the subsequent impacts on them so turn to stand against the victor. The enemy suddenly finds the allies. The truthful axiom for war strategists and statesmanship that is highlighted by the historical experiences is to restrain in pursuing success in war when culminating points are reached because first, the logic of strategy must based on the rationale, second, it is dealing with human, life and action-reaction sequence, measure and countermeasure and not inanimate object. At this case, it is understood why Mc Donald’s has to stop expanding the Franchise after reaching a certain number.
In the implementation of strategy level sometimes seems to be dubious. For example in the western theatre, the conspicuousness of regularity (against the war logic) worried Hitler very much so he decided to halt the operation after capturing French and Belgium and let the Allied flee across the canal before his army’s nose. Hitler was senselessly suspicious of the Allied military maneuver to trap German army. Besides, he deliberately intended the limited destruction of BEF for British acknowledgment of German position on the continent that made him easier to reach peace. The halt was eventually viewed by many strategists to be Hitler’s mistaken assessment due to allowing the enemy ‘buying the time’, reorganized later and did forceful backlash. But instead, the decision of Hitler to push Soviet army deep into Soviet territory approaching Leningrad and Moscow
An Endnote
Undisputedly, Luttwak’s work is very prolific and his most culminating journey of strategic thought along his other books. But, it has two main substantial weaknesses. Firstly, the paradigm he rests on is perceived morally flawed by moralists for encouraging the war; his concept has a ‘similarity’ of Hegelian dialectical logic. As criticized by many scholars, the weakness of Hegel's dialectic is that an abstract method which is detached from the concrete, historical and empirical investigations turned into a perverse sort of irrational "rationalism". In that case, the theory has significantly deduced social phenomena and historical processes through nullifying their antecedents.
Secondly, Luttwak insisted on the paradoxical strategy, the form of irrationality and naïve ’rationalism’. On behalf of ‘common sense’, off course, the best route for army will be different for each other. For examples, the evading army, the best and safest route is indirect way to attack the enemy. Otherwise, for the invading army, the best route is to pave on the shortest and modest route to conquer the enemy because the Luttwak’s ‘irrational’ paradoxical logic in term of “violating all sort of common sense criteria” will undeniably scatter its might, overextend its supply lines, and give an incentive for counter-attack. Sun Tzu knew this entire thing but, once again, without compelling to ‘paradox’.
1 Comment
Great Review ! Ahmad!
Posted on 9 Oktober 2017 pukul 09.48
Posting Komentar
Silahkan mengisi komentar dan masukan yang konstruktif dibawah ini: