Introduction

You may have heard this story before: Fifty years ago, the Yom Kippur War displayed the lethality of new weapons and seemed to reveal a change to the character of war. The commander of the then-new U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), General William DePuy, sent the commandant of the U.S. Army’s Armor School, Major General Donn Starry, to study that war. His goal was to extract lessons for countering and, if necessary, fighting the countries that were aligned through the Warsaw Pact in Europe.^[1] From the detailed analysis of the effectiveness of new technologies in that war, TRADOC published the doctrine of Active Defense in 1976.^[2]

You may not have heard the end of this story. After leading the study of Yom Kippur, Starry took command of V Corps in Germany and began testing concepts in Active Defense against an attack by the Warsaw Pact forces arrayed in front of him. Once put into practice, he discovered that the doctrine which he himself had helped to craft was, in fact, lacking.^[3] And he was not the only critic of Active Defense.

Between 1977 and 1981, Military Review published 80 articles criticizing the doctrine.^[4] Critics pointed out that the lethality of antitank guided missiles in the open desert of the Sinai did not translate to the restrictive forests and hills of central Europe;^[5] additionally, they noted that the Soviets had transitioned from the concentrated breakthrough described in Active Defense to a dispersed attack focused on creating opportunities for second echelons to exploit.^[6] Furthermore, Active Defense did not meet the strategic requirements of the U.S. Army to threaten an offense that could liberate Warsaw Pact countries and so deter the Soviet Union from contemplating war. Active Defense focused too much on the technology displayed in Yom Kippur and not enough on the operational and strategic context of a war with the Soviet Union.

Today, many writers are making recommendations about how the U.S. Army should fight based on observations of the Russo Ukrainian War. Just as with the Army’s study of the Yom Kippur War, these commentators often focus on the technology employed in Ukraine. They channel Carl von Clausewitz to make grand pronouncements about how this technology indicates “the changing character of war.”

One such writer, supporting a new Joint Warfighting Concept, claims: “The character of war—how, where, with what weapons, and technologies wars are fought—is changing rapidly. For example, the last fundamental change in the character of war occurred between World War I and World War II. Technological advancements fundamentally transformed the character of warfare.”^[7] Another pair of authors argue in support of changes for Army 2030: “Cheap and abundant sensors, paired with increasingly precise long-range fires and space, electronic warfare, and cyber capabilities, are changing the character of warfare.”^[8]

Ultimately, however, both of these arguments—and the many like them—are problematic. On their most basic level, because they focus on technological change, they do not align with Clausewitz’s use of the character of war. Instead of discussing technology, he explained his contemporary character of war in the context of political and societal change. He caveated such language by explaining, “Wars must vary with the nature of their motives and of the situations which give rise to them.”^[9]

These arguments ignore context. Context matters. There is not a single character of war across the world. Based on the belligerents involved, their policy objectives, their military strategies, their economics, their societies and the terrain they fight over, each war has its own character. Even within a war, different theaters and fronts can have separate characters. Additionally, the initial period of war often has a distinct character from how it looks after each side has fully mobilized.

For 250 years, the U.S. Army has adapted to the characters of the wars it has been called to fight. As the Army prepares to fight a potential future conflict, it should not just analyze contemporary conflicts, but it should also remember its past to understand how the characters of its wars have influenced the strategies it has pursued.

Ukraine does provide an additional data point to forecasting the future character of potential wars, but we should not make sweeping generalizations about the changing character of war based on narrow observations of technological change. To learn from it, we should take Michael Howard’s recommended approach to military history, basing our analysis on a broad study of conflict to recognize both the similarities and discontinuities in the Russo-Ukrainian War when compared to other wars.^[10] Using a broad historical perspective, we need to understand how the context of this war is different from the context of a potential war between the United States and Russia or China. We need to attempt to forecast the character of such a potential war and use it to predict an optimal strategy to deter or defeat those adversaries.

The Problem with Technology Myopia

In writing on the American “Way of War,” Russell Weigley warned half a century ago, “The search for a new strategic doctrine must not be confused with the search for a better weapons technology. . . . To seek refuge in technology from hard problems of strategy and policy was already another dangerous American tendency, fostered by the pragmatic qualities of the American character and by the complexity of nuclear-age technology.”^[11]

Instead of learning lessons suited to a specific context, commentators who emphasize how technological change drives the character of war often turn to the myth of the technological “silver bullet.” This myth reinforces America’s strategic culture, which, since the bomber mafia of World War II, has sought a technological solution to war.^[12] For decades, theorists on the Revolution of Military Affairs have promised technology that could eliminate the “fog of war” and allow for assured victory. Today, the latest batch of theorists focus on drones and artificial intelligence. Commentators who overemphasize technology risk thinking that all we need to do is synchronize (or converge) the right capabilities to win a war.

Technology does matter, but myopically focusing on it leads to an overly narrow view of the character of war. Consider, for example, some of the most significant technological advances of the 19th century. The adoption of rifles led to an increasingly dispersed battlefield; this extended lines and made it difficult to achieve decisive victories using Napoleon’s massed columns. Trains allowed for more rapid mobilization and deployment of operational reserves. The British Empire annihilated the vast forces of the Mahdi in the Battle of Omdurman using machine guns.^[13] In more recent years, the United States twice dominated Iraqi forces using superior weaponry. But of course, we must also remember that, even with an overwhelming technological edge, the United States was unable to defeat either the Viet Cong or the Taliban.

We cannot assume that any technology will provide a decisive edge over Russia or China. Today, new technologies rapidly diffuse, and Russia and China have the scientific and industrial capabilities to quickly replicate or adapt to breakthroughs.

For all the focus on technology in Ukraine, the key weapons in that conflict have been heavy artillery, mines and commercially available Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS). Replace UAS with squadrons of biplanes, and the character of the current conflict would be easily recognized by an officer from World War I. The mass of UAS have made it difficult to achieve surprise in Ukraine, but, while planning for the Spring Offensive in 1918, the Germans also had to conceal their forces from aerial observation to maintain surprise.

Few authors describing the character of war focus on the challenge of low-tech mines, but these mines froze Ukraine’s 2023 counteroffensive at Mala Tokmachka.^[14] The Ukrainian officers that I interviewed explained that they had solutions to many of the other challenges in the war, but not the mines. Russians emplace minefields far too deeply to be easily breached by our current equipment; they double and triple stack antitank mines to disable breaching equipment, and they have various means of reseeding minefields to quickly seal a breach.

The Russo-Ukrainian War also allows us to reexamine previous pronouncements of technologically driven changes to the character of war. Before the war, many writers feared the advent of hybrid and cyber warfare. Ukraine has shown the limits of both.

For over a decade, pundits have feared a cyber–Pearl Harbor.^[15] In the potential of cyber-attacks, they saw something that was changing the character of war. Cyber even became a new domain in multi-domain operations (MDO).^[16] Before the war, some writers, following the trail of the technologically driven character of war, predicted the Russian invasion of Ukraine “could give the world its first experience of a true cyber war.”^[17] Russia possessed advanced cyber capabilities and had years to develop attacks on Ukraine. One senior leader said that the Russians “will do things that will ruin people and cause great harm. This is a serious thing. It’s not just about making the lights go on and off.”^[18]

However, in actuality, Russian cyberattacks did little to disrupt Ukraine. One analysis of the effects of Russian cyberattacks reported “the prevailing trends suggest cyber operations have yet to make a material impact on the battlefield.”^[19]A decade ago, the consensus was that attackers have the advantage in cyberspace. However, Ukraine has shown that defenders now have the upper hand because “threat intelligence advances, including the use of artificial intelligence, have helped make it possible to detect attacks more effectively. And, internet-connected end-point protection has made it possible to distribute protective software code quickly.”^[20]

The successful development of cyber defense techniques displays the importance of understanding and adapting to technology, but we should not suppose that new technology will change the character of warfare. The U.S. Army may have over-assumed the importance of cyber operations in its new doctrine of MDO. Much of MDO relies on corps converging cyber-attacks with other domains. Should we really delay our operations to wait for the unproven effects of cyber to create “windows of convergence”? Should we base our entire approach to war around technology?

The Political Character of War

Instead of myopically focusing on technology, we must remember how Clausewitz analyzed the character of war. When Clausewitz discussed the “Character of Contemporary War,” he did not mention the development of rifles or lighter, Gribeauval cannons. In fact, he did not mention technology at all. Instead, he focused on war’s political context. He discussed the importance of nationalism and the nation in arms: “What an enormous contribution the heart and temper of a nation can make to the sum total of its politics, war potential, and fighting strength. Now that governments have become conscious of these resources, we cannot expect them to remain unused in the future, whether the war is fought in self-defense or in order to satisfy intense ambition. Obviously, wars waged by both sides to the full extent of their national strength must be conducted on different principles.”^[21]

If we want to talk about the character of war, we should follow Clausewitz and analyze the contemporary strategic factors in potential future wars with specific adversaries. We should examine how the character of a potential war would impact the nature of that war, especially the trinity of violence, chance and reason. That trinity, Antulio J. Echevarria II writes, adjusts with the character of each war and “represents the potential alignment of warlike attitudes and feelings across the socio-cultural, military, and political dimensions of armed conflict.”^[22] We should ask, What are our potential adversaries’ political objectives, societal norms and potential to mobilize for a war? Will they pursue a limited, or a total war?

Strategies of Exhaustion and Annihilation

With a better prediction of the character of war, we can forecast the approach the United States should take to prevail in that war. The German military historian Hans Delbrück conceptualized that nations sought victory either through strategies of annihilation or of exhaustion.^[23] Soviet military theorist Alexander Svechin expanded on Delbrück’s ideas. Svechin argued that choosing between annihilation or exhaustion was the most fundamental aspect of strategy and determined how a country should prepare for war.^[24]

Strategies of annihilation seek a decisive battle. They concentrate a nation’s power on a decisive point to produce an extraordinary victory that demonstrates the futility of continued resistance. They seek to directly target and subdue the enemy’s center of gravity, most commonly their primary field army. Everything is subordinate to achieving that victory. Annihilation provides strategic simplicity and clarity.

Conversely, strategies of exhaustion are diverse, indirect and prolonged. In exhaustion, defeating enemy armies is only a part of the path to victory. Strategies of exhaustion use military, political and economic fronts to weaken any enemy’s strength until they view their position as untenable and lose the will to resist.^[25]

Adapting to Wars of Diverse Characters in the Early U.S. Army

To better anticipate how the Army should prepare for the potential future character of war, we should understand how the Army has pursued victory throughout its history.

During the Colonial Era, following the end of the chaos of the Thirty Years’ War, European states fought limited wars. Their monarchical leaders sought to seize a province or a couple of fortresses while not putting at risk the delicate social fabric of the ancient regimes. They fought wars with tight rules that were not onerous to civilian populations by limiting taxation and economic destruction. To fight these wars, they used relatively small, professional and highly trained armies. Due to the prevalence of siege warfare and leaders’ unwillingness to risk their investment in their soldiers, decisive battles were rare. Statesmen pursued limited wars using strategies of exhaustion to achieve a favorable peace until the next war, which would inevitably come within in a couple of decades.^[26]

The early American colonists diverged from this trend. When they fought the Native Americans, they were not fighting a limited war but a total war for survival. During King Philip’s War, from 1675–1678, a confederation of Native Americans nearly wiped out the New England Colonies.^[27] Such early wars involved the total mobilization of the colonists and brutal methods of destroying crops and settlements in winter to cause starvation and deaths from exposure through strategies of exhaustion. While later wars against Native Americans would be less total in their means, they would continue to involve extreme ways to bring about the exhaustion of an enemy that rarely met for decisive battle.

The early United States also adapted to fight limited wars such as the War of 1812 and the Mexican-American War, with approaches that would be recognized by the European ancien régime.^[28] In particular, the Commanding General of the U.S. Army from 1841 to 1861, Winfield Scott, displayed an adroit understanding of the character of each war he led and how to adapt strategies to fit that character.

In the Mexican-American War, he recognized the brittleness of Mexico’s divided government and its inability to rally the Mexican population to mobilize in a mass war of resistance. He predicted that by seizing Mexico City, the center of the regime’s power, he could paralyze the country and render future resistance futile. He pursued a campaign of decapitation, a form of a strategy of annihilation that seeks a decisive victory by deposing an enemy’s leadership.

By targeting the political center of power, bypassing centers of resistance on his way to Mexico City from Veracruz, and minimizing punishments to the population, he kept the war limited. He fought with a small, capable army with a professional nucleus. He directed his Soldiers to show restraint to the Mexican population to minimize its resistance to the American occupation.^[29]

Totality and Exhaustion in the Civil War

Scott, still leading the Army when the Civil War started, recognized the different character of that war. He saw that the weakness of the Union Army and the political radicalization of the Confederacy meant that secessionism would not be stamped out in a single battle. He sought to employ a strategy of exhaustion against the Confederacy. Newspapers called it the “Anaconda Strategy” for the way it hoped to strangle the South. The Navy would blockade its ports to prevent the exportation of cotton and the importation of military goods. Meanwhile, the Army would delay decisive action until it built up overwhelming forces that, supported by waterways for logistics, would slowly but surely dismember the Confederacy.

Unfortunately, other leaders did not share his perception of the character of the war. They pushed “on to Richmond” and hoped for a short, decisive campaign—ironically, such as the one that Scott had waged in Mexico. At the time, many U.S. Army leaders had grown up on the writings of Henri Jomini, and so they viewed war as having clear principles. The most fundamental principle was to concentrate forces on decisive points. With dreams of Napoleonic glory, successive Union generals sought a decisive battle that would leave Richmond open for the taking. But their dreams led to repeated nightmares for the Union.^[30]

Fortunately for the Union, under Robert E. Lee, the Confederacy also attempted a strategy of annihilation. Lee hoped for a decisive victory that would bring recognition from outside powers and cause the Union’s public to collapse. However, the size of the armies, their increasing dispersion and the advantage of the rifle in the defense meant that the Confederacy never followed any of their victories with an effective pursuit to produce an extraordinary victory. Though he was derided in the South, Joe Johnston recognized that the Confederacy should pursue a strategy of exhaustion. He avoided a decisive battle with Sherman during the Atlanta Campaign. Ulysses S. Grant praised his approach as “the best one that could have been pursued by the whole South—protract the war, which was all that was necessary to enable them to gain recognition in the end.” Grant and Sherman celebrated when Jefferson Davis replaced Johnston with the battle-seeking Hood.^[31]

Once Grant became the commander of the Union, he fully committed it to a strategy of exhaustion as originally envisioned by Scott. Unlike military leaders in the limited wars of 18th century Europe or the Mexican-American War, but like in the Indian Wars, Grant would deliberately target the Confederacy’s means to continue waging war. He ordered Sherman to “get into the interior of the enemy’s country as far as you can, inflicting all the damage you can against their war resources.”^[32] Sherman recognized that it was an approach appropriate for how total the character of the war had become: “[T]his war differs from European wars in this particular: we are fighting not only hostile armies, but a hostile people, and must make young and old, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war, as well as their organized armies.”^[33]

Such direct targeting of enemy civilian property was unthinkable in Europe and would have had little support within the Union in 1861. But by 1864, the war had become so bloody, and popular passions had become so inflamed, that the character of it had become near total.^[34]

A Limited Army for the Wars of Empire

After the Civil War, the U.S. Army returned to fighting Native Americans on the frontiers. It employed only limited means toward these often brutal campaigns of exhaustion. Though small and under-resourced, the professional Army had a clear purpose and optimized for dispersed campaigns of small actions against mobile Indian forces.^[35]

In 1898, the U.S. Army fought a “splendid little war” against Spain. Incorporating hastily raised volunteer units, it fought a short war of annihilation to decisively defeat Spain in the Caribbean and in the Philippines. Though the Spanish-American War was short, the U.S. Army found that it required a transition to a war of a completely different character. By annexing the Philippines, the U.S. Army would face over a decade of anti-imperialist insurrection. It adapted to fight an overseas, counterinsurgency campaign of exhaustion, and it would have to learn to fight guerrillas, raise indigenous forces, understand political dynamics, run military governments and negotiate settlements.^[36] The Spanish-American War would not be the last time that the Army would have to fight in such a way.

The Army would wage another short, limited war in the Poncho Villa Expedition of 1916 before facing the totality of World War I.

World War I

World War I brought to culmination the industrial mobilization and nationalism of the 19th century. Through mass conscription and a national reserve system, European states created armies of millions. The size of the armies and depth of strategic reserves prevented a single battle from producing a decisive result.^[37]

During Europe’s era of limited war, statesmen might have negotiated a peace deal after the bloody battles of 1914, but the popular passions unleashed that year could not be reined in. Without a single battle of annihilation feasible, the belligerents would have to fight until their populations reached exhaustion.^[38]

On the Western Front, the density of forces, the development of the elastic defense, and the ability of the defender to more rapidly use rail lines to bring in operational reserves to counterattack an exhausted attacker made it impossible to achieve a breakthrough and conduct exploitation. Meanwhile, the wide expanse of the Eastern Front made breakthroughs easier; the front lines moved more dramatically, with a few examples of spectacular offensives including successes such as the Gorlice-Tarnow Offensive, the Brusilov Offensive, the Romanian Campaign and the Battle of Riga.^[39]

While the war raged in Europe, the U.S. Army stood at a pitiful one hundred thousand Soldiers. Though the Preparedness Movement tried to make the United States ready for war, isolationists prevented a substantial expansion of the Army. Because the United States was unready to contribute meaningfully to the war, Germany accepted the risk of conducting an unrestricted submarine warfare campaign in the Atlantic that sunk American ships.

By sinking American ships and Sailors, the Germans pushed President Woodrow Wilson to enter the war in April 1917. Eventually, the U.S. Army would mobilize more than four million Soldiers, but it would take over a year for them to make a significant contribution to the Western Front. The Army had to quickly adapt to contributing to a strategy of exhaustion against the Central Powers by fighting the attritional campaigns of the trenches. It learned rapidly from its experienced French and British tutors.

In August 1918, after Germany’s Spring Offensive culminated, the Allies launched their counterattack with the first large-scale participation by the United States. While the U.S. Army joined in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, the economic blockade of the Central Powers and the Allied pressure against its weaker members led to cascading crises in the Ottoman Empire, in Bulgaria and in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Though the German army was still fighting in France, its allies were crumbling, its economy was in ruins and revolutionaries had overthrown the Kaiser. Germany was exhausted. General John Pershing pushed to ensure Germany’s defeat was total: “Finally, I believe that complete victory can only be obtained by continuing the war until we force unconditional surrender from Germany, but if the Allied Governments decide to grant an armistice, the terms should be so rigid that under no circumstances could Germany again take up arms.”^[40]

World War II

Twenty-three years later, the United States would again go to war against Germany—and the rest of the Axis Powers. Entering a war that approached Clausewitz’s theoretical ideal of a total war, the United States had learned from World War I and had prepared for mass mobilization. Once again, a single battle of annihilation was impossible. The United States joined the Allies in a strategy of exhaustion, adding strategic bombing to the traditional exhaustive strategies of blockades and military campaigns aimed at wearing down an opponent’s ability and will to resist.

Though the U.S. Army was more prepared than it had been in World War I, it still had initially limited means to fight in multiple theaters against capable, tenacious and experienced enemies. The Army commenced its fight with campaigns in peripheral areas against enemy vulnerabilities. In the South Pacific, due to what he called the “paucity of resources at my command,” General Douglas MacArthur pursued an indirect approach that avoided decisive battle. He said, “It was the practical application of this system of warfare—to avoid the frontal attack with its terrible loss of life; to by-pass Japanese strongpoints and neutralize them by cutting their lines of supply; to thus isolate their armies and starve them on the battlefield; to, as Willie Keeler used to say, ‘hit ‘em where they ain’t’—that from this time forward guided my movements and operations.”^[41]

While seeking the total defeat of the Axis, the United States accepted political settlements to break off Axis partners such as Vichy France in North Africa or the anti-Mussolini, Badoglio regime in Italy. Upon occupying Morocco, General George Patton visited the Grand Vizier of Morocco to tell him that he had no intention of disrupting local political arrangements.^[42] Even in a near total war, the U.S. Army recognized the political character of war and used it to contribute to wearing down the Axis’ capability to resist.

Over time, the United States and its Allies established an overwhelming advantage in capabilities, defeated the German U-Boats and Japanese Navy, strangled the Axis access to strategic resources, obliterated their industries, and wore down their forces in peripheral campaigns such as MacArthur’s in the Pacific and the attacks through the “soft underbelly” of the Mediterranean in Europe (not to mention the titanic exertions of the Soviets against Germany and Chinese against Japan). When the Allies landed in France, they had achieved complete air dominance, and the Germans were spread too thin to offer an effective defense.^[43] By the time it surrendered, Germany lay in ruins, with millions of German refugees hungrily shambling across Europe.

World War II exhibited how the character of war escalates toward more total methods. At the onset of the war, Germany and Britain refrained from bombing civilian areas, seeing such tactics as barbaric. By the end of the war, however, tens of thousands of civilians had died in firebombings, millions more in death camps, and dropping atomic bombs on cities seemed utilitarian.^[44]

Returning to Limited Wars

But as the United States entered the Cold War, nuclear weapons would temper escalation. Just five years after the totality of World War II, the U.S. Army would find itself enmeshed in a constrained war in Korea. Although brutal for the Soldiers involved, the war was limited by the means mobilized for it, by the methods used (no nukes and no bombing China) and by the political ends sought. The United States had focused on the threat of an all-out Soviet attack, but it had not prepared it to deal with limited conflicts.^[45]

Although the Selective Service Act of 1948 instituted peacetime conscription, the U.S. Army was not ready to fight a limited but intense war. Its forces in the Pacific were in a particularly pitiful state, focused either on occupation duties in Japan or on advising the establishment of a constabulary in the Republic of Korea.

In Korea, the advisors in the Korean Military Advisory Group did not expect a communist invasion, and did not know if they should even stay to fight with their partners.^[46] After all, just a few months before, Secretary of State Dean Acheson had deliberately left Korea out of his description of a “defensive perimeter [that] runs along the Aleutians to Japan and then goes to the Ryukyus.”^[47]

In June 1950, observing the United States’ lack of commitment to Korea, and its lack of readiness to intervene, the Democratic Republic of Korea (DPRK) launched a surprise invasion. Spearheaded by experienced soldiers and Soviet-provided T-34 tanks, it quickly overran the poorly equipped Republic of Korea Army, took Seoul, brushed aside the U.S. Army’s hastily assembled Task Force Smith and pinned the remaining forces in the Pusan Perimeter.

The U.S. Army was thrown into a limited war based on an executive order and a United Nations (UN) Security Council Resolution. Though the U.S. Army had fought limited wars before, this one was of a new character. It fought with a draft Army, but because the United States prioritized deterring a Soviet attack in Europe, the forces in Korea received limited support.
Even with limited forces, General Douglas MacArthur saw an opportunity to defeat the DPRK using a strategy of annihilation by landing at Inchon, encircling their forces in the south, and pursuing the rest toward the Chinese border. Ignoring China’s threats of entering the war if the United States approached the Yalu River, MacArthur seemed to have pulled off a spectacular victory. But as his overextended troops approached the Yalu, China poured across the border and drove MacArthur’s forces south of Seoul.

President Harry S. Truman fired MacArthur in April 1951. MacArthur viewed the war as total with no substitute for victory, while Truman sought to keep it limited. He did not want to overcommit the United States to Korea in the face of possible communist aggression in Europe. The war had also become increasingly unpopular at home. Forty percent of Americans in 1951 regretted entering the war, and, in 1952, that number increased to fifty percent.^[48] Truman replaced MacArthur with General Matthew Ridgway, who shared Truman’s desire to keep the war limited. Ridgway wrote that his “most immediate [directive] was to avoid any action that might result in an extension of hostilities and thus lead to a worldwide conflagration.”^[49]

Subordinate to Ridgway, Lieutenant General James Van Fleet took command of the Eighth Army. Between April and June 1951, Van Fleet crushed the Chinese Army’s Fifth Phase Counteroffensive. Before the Chinese could reorganize and withdraw, he conducted a counterattack, which left the Chinese in chaos with over one hundred thousand casualties—a third of their forces. He saw an opportunity to turn a limited operational victory into a decisive, strategic battle of annihilation that would eliminate China’s capability to continue fighting in Korea. However, Ridgway, in consultation with Washington, denied his request.^[50]

Forgoing an opportunity for victory through annihilation, the United States would pursue a strategy of exhaustion. It relied on limited, attritional attacks and bombing to wear down the communists. The strategy took two more years to lead to an armistice. In the end, Joseph Stalin’s death and the Soviet Union’s disinterest in continuing to support the war was likely the deciding factor in the communists’ agreeing to a ceasefire.^[51]

Relearning Counterinsurgency

After the Korean War, the U.S. Army would fight another limited war, but this time against an insurgency in Vietnam. While the means employed by the United States were limited, the conflict approached total war from the Vietnamese perspective. The United States could not lure the Viet Cong guerrillas or North Vietnamese regulars into a decisive battle to win through a strategy of annihilation. Instead, it had to turn to exhaustion. To break the communists’ will to resist, the United States approached totality in its ways, dropping over seven million tons of bombs in Indochina, which was three times the amount it had used in World War II.^[52]

Although the United States had overwhelming technological advantages against the communists, it had forgotten that the character of war is innately political. As Bernard Fall observed, “When a country is being subverted it is not being outfought; it is being out administered.”^[53] The United States supported a series of overly centralized, corrupt authoritarian governments in Saigon. In June 1956, President Ngo Diem replaced all provincial, district and village leaders with centrally appointed officials, which broke the traditional feedback mechanism between the government and the 80 percent of the population that lived in the villages.^[54]

Meanwhile, the communists created a grassroots, village-centered administrative apparatus. As one communist cadre recognized: “If the village level is weak, then I guarantee you, no matter how strong the central government is, it won’t be able to do a thing.”^[55] With this grassroots administration system, the communists separated Saigon from the people and mobilized them to win a protracted war of exhaustion. Unfortunately, the United States did not learn the lessons of the political character of war from Vietnam and would repeat the same mistakes in propping up an overly centralized government in Afghanistan.^[56]

Post Cold War Dreams of Annihilation

In the Persian Gulf War, the Army would wage a war of a completely different character. Facing the Iraqi Army that had conducted a limited attack to seize Kuwait, the United States, with an overwhelming coalition, could wage a limited war using a strategy of annihilation to decisively defeat the Iraq Army and liberate Kuwait. With time on its side, the coalition achieved air dominance, which fixed and attritted Iraqi forces, before the coalition launched a counteroffensive with an attack that broke through Iraq’s spread-out forces on their western flank in the open desert.

The Persian Gulf War offered the ideal character of war for the U.S. Army emerging from the Cold War. It excelled on battlefields that mimicked the terrain of the National Training Center’s Central Corridor, which it had trained in throughout the 1980s. Unfortunately, it was so successful that the Army came to hope that future wars would have a similar character. To this day, warfighter simulations generally follow a scenario of a limited enemy attack, a buildup of overwhelming combat power and air dominance, and a limited offensive to decisively defeat the enemy and restore international borders.

In the 2000s, the United States would seemingly initially succeed in limited wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It employed a strategy of annihilation against the Taliban and Saddam Hussein’s regime. However, the character of those wars changed as insurgencies emerged and turned them into wars of exhaustion. In Iraq, the society eventually mobilized the means to defeat the insurgency, most notably in the Sunni Awakening. In Afghanistan, an increasingly isolated and corrupt government continued to rely on outside support to insulate it from the insurgency. Once the outside support came to an end, the population did not want to fight to preserve the government.

The Various Characters of War in Ukraine

In February 2022, Russia, misreading Ukraine’s combat readiness and will to fight, attempted to overwhelm Ukraine with a strategy of annihilation focused on overthrowing the government in Kyiv. Russia employed limited means for its invasion. Because it did not mobilize its society, Russia called its invasion a “special military operation” and outlawed language referring to it as a war.^[57] It sought to fight a quick, limited conflict that would neither demand much from its population nor risk popular backlash to Vladmir Putin’s regime.^[58]

When its initial thrusts failed, and its forces were vulnerably strung out across Ukraine, the Ukrainian armed forces had an opportunity to counterattack and achieve an extraordinary victory. Even though Ukrainians rallied to the defense of their nation, they lacked the capabilities to decisively defeat the Russian army and force an end to the war. While Ukraine periodically received support from the West, it always came too little and too late to provide a decisive advantage.

After the initial period of the war, both sides mobilized additional forces and established a continuous, defense-in-depth across the front. The character of the war changed, and a strategy of annihilation became infeasible. However, exhaustion has also been out of reach. Ukrainian society has not faltered under Russian attacks on its energy infrastructure or due to grinding casualties. Similarly, Ukraine has attempted to attack Russian oil infrastructure, sabotage arms manufacturers and bleed Russian forces dry in a strategy of exhaustion.^[59] With its partners, Ukraine has also hoped that sanctions would undermine Russia’s capability to wage war.

Forecasting the Character of a Future War

Observing how the Russo-Ukrainian War has sunk into a campaign of exhaustion, a number of commentators have made hyperventilating calls for the United States to prepare for protracted wars of mass mobilization against Russia or China. Those authors assume such a war would resemble the total wars of World War I or II, but the character of a future war will not be like the total wars of the 20th century.

Just as the Russo-Ukrainian War has been constrained, a future war with Russia over the Baltic or China over Taiwan would also be limited. Such a war would share a number of political similarities with both 18th century European wars and the Korean War.

First, nuclear weapons will continue to constrain war. In both the Korean War and the Russo-Ukrainian War, nuclear weapons tempered and are tempering escalation. If the United States went to war with China or Russia, both sides would conduct a dangerous and tightly choreographed dance to fight in a manner that does not risk a nuclear response. Just as in Korea, both sides would likely keep the conflict limited to the contested terrain. Long-range strikes against enemy homelands would be too risky. The adversary could not know if the incoming munitions were conventional or nuclear—which should make us reconsider investments in long-range precision strikes.

Second, like the monarchies in 18th-century Europe, today’s authoritarians are primarily concerned with maintaining political order. Just as in the ancien regime, modern dictators fear a politically active population. As seen with Russia, our adversaries would want to fight a limited war that does not attempt to mobilize the population or extract overly burdensome taxes. Contemporary China and Russia are not mid-20th-century totalitarian regimes, which rallied their populations into a fanatical fervor. Instead, they have lulled their populations into acquiescence through promises of stability and economic growth in return for political order.^[60]

Third, just like those 18th-century powers, China and Russia have reformed their armies toward small, professional forces optimized to fight limited wars.^[61] A century ago, states maintained millions of reservists whom they could mobilize, hand rifles to and put on trains to the front. Countries today do not maintain such systems for mass mobilization, and modern forces require much more investment to be effective in battle. After its initial losses in Ukraine, Russia has struggled with its force quality, emptied its prisons for manpower and resorted to pulling museum-grade tanks out a declining stock of Soviet equipment.

Finally, wars will likely be limited; we get an indication of this when we note that Russia and China have limited territorial ambitions. When wars are for limited ends, belligerents will generally only mobilize limited means. As Clausewitz observed, “If policy is directed only toward minor objectives, the emotions of the masses will be little stirred.”^[62] Russia aims to reclaim lost “Russian” lands. China seeks to finally end its civil war by seizing Taiwan. These are not the fascist regimes of the 20th century with visions of reshaping the world through conquest. The age of empire-building is long over. International norms now respect national sovereignty. Countries have become difficult to swallow with the proven strength of insurgency. Even if a conquest were to succeed, it would be of little added value. A country’s strength no longer relies as much on seizing territory, population or natural resources.

If they were to initiate a conflict, Russia and China would only launch an attack when they thought they could achieve strategic surprise. With modern surveillance, it would be hard for them to mobilize a large force undetected; thus, our adversaries would likely employ a limited force. Since World War II, during interventions in Ukraine, Georgia, Kosovo, Chechnya, Afghanistan and Czechoslovakia, Russia has employed limited forces that rely “on elan, surprise, and a willingness to bluff.”^[63] To invade Taiwan, China would be restricted by its amphibious landing ships, with one analysis estimating that they have a capacity of just 20,000 troops.^[64]

With a limited force exploiting strategic surprise, our adversaries would hope to rapidly seize their objectives in a fait accompli. They would then entrench, threaten nuclear escalation, and hope that the United States would not have the political will to dislodge them. Russia’s defeat of Ukraine’s 2023 counteroffensive displayed the difficulty of penetrating a prepared defense-in-depth.

Victory Through Annihilation

To credibly deter and, if necessary, defeat such an attack, the United States needs to be ready to conduct a strategy of annihilation. It needs to prepare to decisively defeat the limited forces involved in a fait accompli before they can entrench. Ukraine had such an opportunity in March and April of 2022, but it lacked the capabilities to do so.

With proper preparation, training and doctrine, the United States and its partners could blunt a Russian attack into the Baltic. The Baltic Defense Line, with its hundreds of bunkers and stocked piled mines, is a correct step toward denying Russia the possibility of a fait accompli.^[65] Similarly, Taiwan, with its “porcupine” strategy, is on the right path to becoming hard for China to easily swallow. It is pursuing asymmetric capabilities to defeat a Chinese amphibious landing.^[66] We should reinforce these efforts.

We need to be ready to rapidly conduct a defensive battle of annihilation and not assume that we can take our time to build combat power in theater to wage a long-term campaign of exhaustion such as we did in Korea or in the World Wars.

Ukraine displays the risks of a strategy of exhaustion. If it pursues exhaustion, the United States risks a prolonged, bloody, unwinnable war and potential nuclear escalation. Furthermore, the United States is not postured to pursue a strategy of exhaustion. It has a minimal number of individual ready reserves to mobilize as replacements for combat losses, its industrial base could not easily transition to making armaments, and its population is politically divided and might have limited commitment to wars abroad.

In a future war, particularly considering its likely limited context, the United States would find it difficult to pursue a strategy of exhaustion against Russia or China. As the limited impact of sanctions on Russia has shown, large, continental powers are tough to economically blockade.^[67] Simultaneously, as Russia’s attacks on Ukraine have demonstrated, non-nuclear strategic attacks cannot decisively degrade a country’s capability to wage war or its population’s will to fight.

A strategy of exhaustion also plays into Russia’s perceived strengths. Vladamir Putin, and the ultranationalists who have come to influence his thinking, believe that Russia’s strength comes from its passionarnost, its “capacity for suffering.”^[68] Taking advantage of his belief in Russia’s passionarnost, Putin feels no remorse about sending thousands of Russian soldiers to their deaths in hopeless attacks to wear down Ukrainian defenders. Putin has silenced opposition to the war and feels little pressure to cease fighting. His perception that Russia can endure longer than its enemies in a conflict will mean that he will not be deterred by a strategy of exhaustion, but rather will see it as a chance to leverage what he perceives as Russia’s strengths.

Employing a Maneuver Defense to Win a Battle of Annihilation

To achieve a rapid and decisive victory in the defense, the U.S. Army should train and organize its forces to use maneuver as an operational approach. Unfortunately, with MDO and Army 2023, the Army has been moving toward attritional approaches.

Maneuver and attrition are best seen as opposite ends of a sliding scale of operational approaches. All combat involves a blend of the two. An attritional approach seeks the material wearing down of an enemy through the efficient and synchronized use of combat power that results in favorable loss ratios. Attrition focuses on cumulative destruction and allows operational simplicity, provides relative predictability and minimizes vulnerabilities.

Maneuver uses tempo and surprise to exploit vulnerabilities and prevent enemies from reforming their defenses, repositioning their forces, conducting logistics and synchronizing their efforts. Their combat system falls apart, and they cease to be able to provide effective resistance. In 1989, Marine Corps Doctrinal Publication 1, Warfighting, explained maneuver as seeking “to shatter the enemy’s cohesion through a series of rapid, violent, and unexpected actions which create a turbulent and rapidly deteriorating situation with which he cannot cope.”^[69]

Some commentators on the Russo-Ukrainian War have written that maneuver is dead.^[70] They fall into the trap of overly broad pronouncements of the changing character of war based on narrow observations of technological change. But it is context that determines if maneuver or attrition is the correct operational approach.

By not accounting for context, commentators on the Russo-Ukrainian War are falling into the same pitfalls as observers of the Spanish Civil War. Before World War II, the Spanish Civil War provided a data point for militaries to observe the performance of new technologies. French observers of the war confirmed their preconceived notions of the lethality of modern technology. They believed artillery and antitank weapons had changed the character of warfare to make maneuver impracticable. Writing in the Revue d’infanterie in 1939, General J.C.M.S. Dufieux, the Inspector General of Infantry, concluded that for tanks to not fall victim to antitank guns, they should be dispersed on an extended front with close coordination of infantry and artillery in slow attritional advances. For France, the Spanish Civil War confirmed the lessons of World War I on the correctness of the doctrine of tightly controlled Methodical Battle.^[71] French theorists used the lessons of the Spanish Civil War to refute General Charles de Gaulle’s proposal to develop a professional force for mobile warfare.^[72] However, when Germany attacked in 1940, France would face a fundamentally different context.

Context has always mattered for maneuver. Scott employed maneuver approaches during the Mexico City campaign and Grant effectively isolated the Vicksburg garrison in a campaign of maneuver. Grant was less successful in using maneuver during the Richmond campaign since he could not outflank Lee.

When opponents can minimize their vulnerabilities by establishing a continuous defense-in-depth, maneuver becomes infeasible. During World War II, Allied armies struggled to break through German lines during Operations Epsom, Goodwood, and Market Garden and in the battles of Monte Cassino, the Siegfried Line and Villers-Bocage.^[73] The Korean War fell into attrition even with UN’s air domination. Throughout the 1980s, Iran and Iraq bled themselves dry trying to break through each other’s defenses. However, maneuver still occurred during many periods of World War II, in the first year of the Korean War, in the Israeli-Arab Wars and in the invasion of Iraq.

Ukraine has once again shown that context matters for maneuver. Through surprise and speed, Russia quickly overran southern Ukraine. In the north, Ukraine conducted a maneuver defense of Kyiv.^[74] In September 2022, Ukraine successfully employed a maneuver approach in the Kharkiv Counterattack. Ukraine’s General Oleksandr Syrskyi used light, mobile groups and advanced 50 km in three days. On the fifth day, his forces conducted such an aggressive pursuit that they overran two crucial Russian logistical hubs in Kupyansk and Izyum.^[75] His forces displayed that maneuver still worked against an enemy that has not established a defense-in-depth.^[76] By 2023, Russia had established a defense that had such a density of mines, fortifications and reserves that attrition became the only feasible operational approach.^[77] But in August 2024, with the Kursk Offensive, Ukraine resurrected maneuver by opening a new front where Russia had not established a defense-in-depth and where it could take advantage of Russian vulnerabilities to destroy reinforcing columns, overrun command posts and capture thousands of soldiers as Russia chaotically tried to reposition forces to reestablish a defense.

Generally, the initial stages of a war provide the optimal opportunity for maneuver approaches. Each side has not had an opportunity to fully mobilize forces, entrench and establish a continuous defense-in-depth.^[78] Maneuver approaches aid in reducing escalation because they produce more rapid victories that often yield more enemy prisoners than dead. The U.S. Army needs to be ready to take advantage of the likely initial character of a war with China or Russia and to organize and train to win through a maneuver operational approach.

Organizing and Training for Maneuver

How to achieve success with a maneuver approach also varies by context. In the opening campaigns of World War II, Germany flexibly used its forces in maneuver approaches based on the context of their employment. During the invasion of Poland, Germany dispersed its tanks along a broad front to exploit gaps in Poland’s incomplete mobilization. In Norway, Germany achieved surprise through a series of amphibious operations.^[79] In France, Germany concentrated tanks to exploit its infantry’s breakthrough in France’s weakly held center.

Although there was a constant throughout its campaigns, the Germans decentralized their artillery to provide responsive fires even at the cost of synchronization and efficiency. They wanted to maximize the tempo of their operations and not have the advance waiting for a fires planning and processing. In contrast to the Germans, the French concentrated their artillery at higher echelons to ensure synchronization and efficiency. France’s 1926 Regulation on the Maneuver of the Artillery warned, “Finally, the systemic allocation of all artillery to subordinate elements must be avoided; it constitutes an abdication of command.”^[80]

In the opening stages of the current war, Ukraine’s decentralized fire system proved critical to its maneuver defense. After Russia’s invasion in 2014, Ukraine began to invest heavily in artillery. By the start of the war, the Ukrainian Armed Forces fielded twelve brigades and two regiments of artillery.^[81] The artillery provided direct support to brigades and below. Ukraine developed Kropova, an application for Android, an “Uber for Artillery,” that flattened the process to request for fires.^[82] Ukraine’s responsive fires enabled its maneuver defense of Kyiv.^[83] In my discussions with Ukrainian officers, they reported that artillery batteries are normally assigned in direct support of infantry battalions to ensure responsive fires within three minutes.

Instead of Ukraine or Germany’s approaches for organizing artillery, the U.S. Army has been pursuing France’s model to optimize for attrition. With the concept for Army 2030, the U.S. Army is centralizing artillery under divisions as the “primary tactical formation.”^[84] This change makes sense when you focus solely on technology as driving the character of war. Centralizing decisionmaking allows you to more efficiently use capabilities and win warfighter simulations.

Unfortunately, it is not just artillery that is being centralized. With Army 2030, the Army is also concentrating recon and engineers within divisions. By stripping cavalry squadrons from most brigades, the Army is inhibiting subordinate units from conducting reconnaissance pull to identify enemy vulnerabilities to exploit. By removing engineers, it prevents subordinate units from developing a tight cohesive relationship with sappers to rapidly breach or emplace obstacles.

The Army has already struggled to implement the tenets of mission command to enable rapid, decentralized decisionmaking.^[85] It needs to organize its forces to enable it to rapidly respond to and defeat a surprise attack. To build the techniques and mental models for rapid decisionmaking, the Army needs to train units to conduct high-tempo operations in large-scale force-on-force exercises that replicate the dynamics of a defense of the Baltic or of Taiwan. Unlike in Korea, we need to have a force that is in place and ready to win a decisive victory at the start of a conflict.

A Ready Army, Not a Mass Army

Based on observations of Ukraine, commentators have pushed for the U.S. Army to focus on preparing for a more total, protracted conflict. These commentators miss the likely limited character of a future war. Their recommendations would detract from the readiness of our forces. If the Army were to develop a force for a protracted war, it would have to divert resources toward stockpiling equipment and reassign personnel toward establishing cadre units to train and integrate mobilized Soldiers.

In 1934, then-Lieutenant Colonel Charles de Gaulle argued that the French Army was too concentrated on mass mobilization for a protracted war. France relied on conscripts to win a war of exhaustion. He proposed the development of professional mechanized divisions to provide a mobile, high-readiness force at the outbreak of war. His proposal was countered by defenders of the nation in arms.^[86] When France then entered World War II with an army optimized for a protracted conflict, it did not go well.

During the Cold War, Morris Janowitz wrote, “To deter acts of aggression, limited or unlimited, the Korean experience suggested that it was not capacity for mobilization that counted most, but rather the state of readiness. The communists gambled in Korea because they believed they could achieve a fait accompli before America could respond based on America’s lack of readiness.”^[87]

But, readiness does not mean the generic metrics that units have to report. To deter Russia or China and, if necessary, to achieve a decisive victory of annihilation, the U.S. Army needs to prioritize preparing units to fight the likely character of a war in the Baltic or in Taiwan.

To do so, we need to reform our personnel system to emphasize building and maintaining cohesive units with high-combat effectiveness to defeat our adversaries. Even though it has been decades since the transition to the all-volunteer force, our personnel system maintains the processes of the mid-20th-century draft Army. The Army personnel system prioritizes bureaucratic efficiency over cohesion.^[88] Since the Korean War, this system has detracted from combat effectiveness.^[89] Every two years, the personnel in our units completely change out. Units are stuck in a Sisyphean endeavor of training and certifying new arrivals that precludes them from developing techniques to fight and win in the specific context of a defense of Taiwan or of the Baltics. Even if it comes at the expense of bureaucratic efficiency, the Army needs to prioritize longer-term service in units to allow them to develop those techniques and maintain the readiness necessary to achieve a quick, decisive victory over our adversaries.

Conclusion: A Clearer Perception of the Character of War

To prevail in potential future conflicts, the Army needs to make calculated bets on the character of those conflicts. If our vision is clouded by a myopic focus on technology, we will misread the future with potentially disastrous consequences. Before an over-emphasis on technology began to cloud our thinking in the mid-20th century, the Army had produced leaders like Grant and Scott who clearly perceived the character of the wars they fought, developed an effective strategy for those wars’ dynamics, and adapted the Army to win. With the right lens to examine each war’s chameleon—like character—we could return that perception.

 

★  ★  ★  ★

Notes

• [1] Ethan Orwin, “Not an Intellectual Exercise: Lessons from U.S.-Israeli Cooperation, 1973-1982,” Military Review 100, no. 1 (January–February 2020), https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Journals/Military-Review/English-Edition-Archives/January-February-2020/Orwin-US-Israeli/.
• [2] Department of the Army (DA), Field Manual (FM) 100-5, Operations (Washington, DC: Headquarters, Department of the Army, April 1977), https://cgsc.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p4013coll9/id/972/rec/2.
• [3] Zach Alessi-Friedlander, “Learning to Fight Outnumbered,” Military Review, 26 April 2017, https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Journals/Military-Review/Online-Exclusive/2017-Online-Exclusive-Articles/Learning-to-Win-While-Fighting-Outnumbered/.
• [4] John Nisser “Conceptualizing doctrinal rejection: a comparison between Active Defense and Airland Battle,” Defence Studies, 23 no. 2 (2023), 280, https://doi.org/10.1080/14702436.2022.2132232.
• [5] Adolf Carlson, “A Revisionist’s View,” Infantry (May–June 1978), 37–39.
• [6] John L. Romjue, “From Active Defense to AirLand Battle: The Development of Army Doctrine, 1973-1982,” (Fort Monroe, VA: U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, June 1984), 16, https://www.tradoc.army.mil/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/From-Active-Defense-to-AirLand-Battle.pdf.
• [7] Mark A. Milley, “Strategic Inflection Point: The Most Historically Significant and Fundamental Change in the Character of War Is Happening Now—While the Future Is Clouded in Mist and Uncertainty,” Joint Force Quarterly 110 (July 2023), https://ndupress.ndu.edu/JFQ/Joint-Force-Quarterly-110/Article/article/3447159/strategic-inflection-point-the-most-historically-significant-and-fundamental-ch/.
• [8] James Rainey and Laura Potter, “Delivering the Army of 2030,” War on the Rocks, 6 August 2023, https://warontherocks.com/2023/08/delivering-the-army-of-2030/.
• [9] Carl von Clausewitz, On War, trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976), 88.
• [10] Michael Howard, “The Use and Abuse of Military History,” Parameters 11, no. 1 (1981), https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol11/iss1/16/.
• [11] Russell F. Weigley, The American Way of War (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1973), 416.
• [12] Thomas G. Mahnken, Technology and the American Way of War Since 1945 (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2008), 6.
• [13] Winston Churchill, The River War Vol. II (London, UK: Longmans, Green & Co, 1899).
• [14] Robert Rose, “Biting Off What It Can Chew: Ukraine Understands Its Attritional Context,” War on the Rocks, 26 September 2023, https://warontherocks.com/2023/09/biting-off-what-it-can-chew-ukraine-understands-its-attritional-context/.
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• [16] DA, FM 3-0, Operations (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, October 2022), ix, https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/ARN36290-FM_3-0-000-WEB-2.pdf.
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• [27] Weigley, 19.
• [28] Morris Janowitz, The Professional Soldier: A Social and Political Portrait (New York, NY: Free Press, 2017), 261.
• [29] Weigley, 66–72.
• [30] Weigley, 92–127.
• [31] Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant (New York, NY: Carles L. Webster & Company, 1885), 326.
• [32] Grant, 413.
• [33] United States War Department, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1893), 799.
• [34] Svechin, 152.
• [35] Janowitz, 262.
• [36] Janowitz, 262.
• [37] Svechin, 244.
• [38] Howard, 112.
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• [41] Weigley, 280.
• [42] Janowitz, 269.
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• [45] T.R. Fehrenbach, This Kind of War (New York, NY: Macmillan, 1963), 43.
• [46] Fehrenbach, 35.
• [47] Dean Acheson, “Excerpts from Acheson’s Speech to The National Press Club,” 12 January 1950, https://web.viu.ca/davies/H102/Acheson.speech1950.htm.
• [48] Steve Crabtree, “The Gallup Brain: Americans and the Korean War,” Gallup, 4 February 2003, https://news.gallup.com/poll/7741/gallup-brain-americans-korean-war.aspx.
• [49] Matthew B. Ridgway, The Korean War (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1967), 162.
• [50] James A. Van Fleet, “The Truth About Korea,” Life, May 1953.
• [51] Bryan R. Gibby, Korean Showdown: National Policy and Strategy in a Limited War (Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 2021), 281–288.
• [52] James P. Harrison, “History’s Heaviest Bombing,” eds. J. Werner and L.D. Huynh, in The Vietnam War: Vietnamese and American Perspectives: Vietnamese and American Perspectives (New York, NY: Routledge, 1993),130–139, https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315698823.
• [53] Bernard Fall, Last Reflections on a War (New York: Doubleday, 1967), 220.
• [54] Fall, 199.
• [55] Jeffrey Race, War Comes to Long An: Revolutionary Conflict in a Vietnamese Province (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010), 42.
• [56] Robert G. Rose, “All Power is Local,” Military Review, January–February 2023, https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Portals/7/military-review/Archives/English/JF-23/Rose/rose-all-power-is-local-v1.pdf.
• [57] Anton Troianovski, “Russia Takes Censorship to New Extremes, Stifling War Coverage,” New York Times, 4 March 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/04/world/europe/russia-censorship-media-crackdown.html.
• [58] Anne Applebaum, “Putin is Caught in His Own Trap,” The Atlantic, 25 June 2023, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/06/putin-caught-in-his-own-trap/674524/.
• [59] “Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian oil refineries and infrastructure,” Reuters, 18 June 2024, https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukrainian-drone-attacks-russian-oil-refineries-infrastructure-2024-06-18/.
• [60] Applebaum, “Putin is Caught in His Own Trap.”
• [61] Howard, 69.
• [62] Clausewitz, 88.
• [63] Mark Galeotti, Putin’s Wars (New York, NY: Osprey Publishing, 2022), 77.
• [64] Joel Wuthnow et al., Crossing the Strait: China’s Military Prepares for War with Taiwan (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 2022), 175, https://ndupress.ndu.edu/Portals/68/Documents/Books/crossing-the-strait/crossing-the-strait.pdf.
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• [66] James O. Ellis Jr. and James Timbie, “A Large Number of Small Things: A Porcupine Strategy for Taiwan,” Texas National Security Review 5, no. 1 (Winter 2021/2022), https://tnsr.org/2021/12/a-large-number-of-small-things-a-porcupine-strategy-for-taiwan/#article.
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• [68] Charles Clover, Black Wind, White Snow: The Rise of Russia’s New Nationalism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016), 2.
• [69] U.S. Marine Corps, Doctrinal Publication 1, Warfighting (Washington, DC: Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, 1989), 59.
• [70] Amos Fox, “Manoeuvre is Dead? Understanding the Conditions and Components of Warfighting,” Royal United Services Institute, 11 April 2022), https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/rusi-journal/manoeuvre-dead-understanding-conditions-and-components-warfighting.
• [71] Gelot, “Les enseignments de la guerre d’Espagne,” Revue d’infanterie 93, November 1938, 1038–1039.
• [72] Robert A. Doughty, “De Gaulle’s Concept of a Mobile, Professional Army: Genesis of French Defeat?” Parameters 4, no. 1, 1974, https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol4/iss1/6/.
• [73] Stephen Biddle, “How Russia Stopped Ukraine’s Momentum: A Deep Defense Is Hard to Beat,” Foreign Affairs, 29 January 2024, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ukraine/how-russia-stopped-ukraines-momentum.
• [74] Paul Sonne et al., “Battle for Kyiv: Ukrainian valor, Russian blunders combined to save the capital,” Washington Post, 24 August 2024, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/interactive/2022/kyiv-battle-ukraine-survival/.
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• [76] Steve Maguire, “Yes, Manoueuvre is Alive. Ukraine Proves It.,” Wavell Room, 4 November 2022, https://wavellroom.com/2022/11/04/yes-manoeuvre-is-alive-ukraine-proves-it.”
• [77] Robert G. Rose, “Biting Off What It Can Chew: Ukraine Understands Its Attritional Context,” War on the Rocks, 26 September 2023, https://warontherocks.com/2023/09/biting-off-what-it-can-chew-ukraine-understands-its-attritional-context/.
• [78] Svechin, 238.
• [79] J.P. Harris, “The Myth of Blitzkrieg,” War in History 2, no. 3 (1995), https://www.jstor.org/stable/26004454.
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• [82] John B. Bradley III, “Fires,” in A Call to Action: Lessons from Ukraine for the Future Force, eds. John A. Nagl and Katie Crombe (Carlisle Barracks, PA: United States Army War College Press, 2024), 101, https://press.armywarcollege.edu/monographs/968/.
• [83] Mykhaylo Zabrodskyi et al., “Preliminary Lessons in Conventional Warfighting.”
• [84] Rainey and Potter, “Delivering the Army of 2030.”
• [85] Robert G. Rose, “Preventing a Short Jump across a Wide Ditch: Fully Embracing Mission Command to Avoid a Multi-Domain Disaster,” Military Review, March–April 2022, https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Journals/Military-Review/English-Edition-Archives/March-April-2022/Rose/.
• [86] Robert A. Doughty, “De Gaulle’s Concept of a Mobile, Professional Army: Genesis of French Defeat?” Parameters 4, no. 1, 1974, https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol4/iss1/6/.
• [87] Janowitz, 266.
• [88] Robert G. Rose, “Ending the Churn: To Solve the Recruiting Crisis, the Army Should be Asking Very Different Questions,” Modern War Institute, 2 September 2024, https://mwi.westpoint.edu/ending-the-churn-to-solve-the-recruiting-crisis-the-army-should-be-asking-very-different-questions/.
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