Scales on War. Bob Scales
first lesson is counterintuitive. Conventional wisdom tells us that we must never fight the next war like we did the last. Yahara tells us that maybe we should. Perhaps wars in the American era would end better if we considered the past as prologue, if we postulated that the pattern of progression in our wars has been essentially unchanged from Greece in 1948 to Afghanistan today. The fundamental conditions of warfare will last for many generations. While Yahara tells us that the pattern of wars will not change, he certainly would concede that it is a losing proposition to try to predict specific times, enemies, technologies, or war-fighting scenarios. It has never worked before, and it likely never will.
From a practical perspective, Yahara is telling us that war is a test of will, not technology. Of course, we need to exploit new technologies, and we must never seek to fight fair. All too often in the American era Soldiers have died needlessly, killed by enemies like the Japanese who used simple things to achieve extraordinary outcomes. Perhaps we should spend first to buy things that work best against wise and diabolical enemies.
Most importantly, Yahara knew where to strike for maximum effect. If he was right and if our most vulnerable center of gravity is dead Americans, perhaps we should place highest priority on protecting those most likely to die.
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War, however, is not the action of a living force upon a lifeless mass . . . but always the collision of two living forces. The ultimate aim of waging war . . . must be taken as applying to both sides. Once again, there is interaction. So long as I have not overthrown my opponent I am bound to fear he may overthrow me. Thus, I am not in control: he dictates to me as much as I dictate to him.1
—Carl von Clausewitz
Once the dogs of war are unleashed and the shooting starts, conflicts follow unpredictable courses. The nineteenth-century philosopher of military strategy Carl von Clausewitz warned that wars are contests between two active, willing enemies, both of whom expect to win. Once begun, war—with its precise planning and cerebral doctrine—quickly devolves into a series of stratagems and counter-stratagems as each side seeks to retain advantages long enough to achieve a decisive end, by collapsing an enemy’s will to resist.2
Over the last seventy years, Western militaries—particularly the U.S. armed forces—have been remarkably consistent in how they fight. They have an extraordinary ability to translate technological innovation, industrial-base capacity, and national treasure into battlefield advantage. But no sooner had Western powers accepted and copied the American way of war than lesser states from Asia, Africa, and the Middle East began in earnest to learn from the sinister wisdom of Colonel Yahara. The colonel and his intellectual progeny are still watching, learning, and adapting. We, on the other hand, have been slow to perceive the growing effectiveness of an asymmetric enemy, partly because of the characteristic Western arrogance that presumes that an enemy, to be a threat, must mimic the Western way of war.
Colonel Yahara was freed from U.S. custody in June 1945 and returned to his homeland, just in time to witness Japan’s former enemy, China, begin to learn from, adapt to, and eventually defeat an enemy who sought to win in the American fashion. Yahara’s old enemy continued to prosecute its way of war in subsequent conflicts and its serial failures suggest a pattern that should disturb us all.
THE CHINESE CIVIL WAR
An effort to redefine and codify an Eastern approach to defeating the Western way of war began in the mountain fastness of Manchuria, immediately after World War II. Mao Zedong and his marshals adapted doctrine from their wartime guerrilla campaigns to fit a conventional war against an enemy superior in technology and matériel. Mao perfected his new way of war against the Nationalists between 1946 and 1949. His simple concepts centered on three tenets, the most important of which was area control. To succeed, Mao’s army first needed to survive in the midst of a larger, better-equipped enemy.3 He divided his troops into small units and scattered them. Maintaining cohesion thus remained his greatest challenge.
Once his own forces were supportable and stable, Mao applied the second tenet—to isolate and compartmentalize the Nationalists. The challenge of this phase was to leverage control of the countryside until the enemy retreated into urban areas and to major lines of communications.4 The final act of the campaign called for finding the enemy’s weakest points and collecting and massing overwhelming force against each sequentially, a process similar to taking apart a strand of pearls one pearl at a time. Mao’s new style of conventional war, though effective, demanded extraordinary discipline and patience under extreme hardship. It also sought quick transition from an area-control force to one capable of fighting a war of movement.
STALEMATE IN KOREA
Within a year of the Chinese Civil War, America severely tested Mao’s methods in the mountains of Korea. Initially, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) badly misjudged the effects of U.S. artillery and tactical airpower. Pushed quickly into maneuver warfare, the Chinese massed in the open, often in daylight, to expand their control over the northern Korean Peninsula. They extended their narrow lines of communications farther down the mountainous spine of Korea as they advanced. However, they soon found their logistic support exposed to U.S. airpower and paid a horrid price for their haste. The spring 1951 offensive mounted by the Chinese sputtered to a halt as U.S. artillery and aerial firepower slaughtered PLA Soldiers in masses and air interdiction cut their lines of supply and forced a retreat back across the Han River.
Brutal experiences led to the relearning of sober lessons from the civil war. The Chinese quickly adjusted to a new situation. Over the following two years their attacks were limited and controlled. The high command learned to keep most key logistic facilities north of the Yalu River, out of reach of U.S. air strikes. South of the river they dispersed and hid, massing only to launch attacks. Soldiers moved at night and chiseled their front lines of resistance into “granite mountains.” U.S. casualties mounted while the Chinese stabilized their own losses at a rate acceptable to Beijing. Many more Americans died during the stability phase than in earlier days of fluid warfare. What was an acceptable human toll to China was unacceptable to the United States. The result was operational and strategic stalemate. To the Chinese, stalemate equaled victory.
THE VIETNAM EXPERIENCE
Over the next two decades, the Vietnamese borrowed from the Chinese experience and found creative ways to lessen the killing effect of firepower, against first France and then the United States. They also proved skilled in adapting to the new challenges posed by their Western enemies. The Viet Minh based its tactical and operational approach on Mao’s unconventional methods. Its conduct of the battle was remarkably reminiscent of siege operations conducted by the PLA during the Chinese Civil War. In both cases, the secrets of success were dispersion and preparation of the battlefield. The Viet Minh remained scattered in small units to offer less detectable and lucrative targets and to allow its troops to live off the land. Fewer supply lines and logistic sites offered even fewer opportunities for interdiction fires.
To win, the Chinese—and eventually the Viet Minh—needed to attack. That demanded the ability to mass temporarily. The Viet Minh had to exercise great care in massing under the enemy umbrella of protective firepower. Superior intelligence indicated the right time and place. The ability to collect and move tens of thousands of Soldiers at the right moment allowed attacking forces to collapse French defenses before firepower could regain the advantage. This capacity to “maneuver under fire,” perfected against the Nationalists and now the French, reached new levels of refinement during the second Indochina War, against the United States.
The North Vietnamese architect of victory, General Vo Nguyen Giap, quickly accommodated his strategic plans to the new realities of U.S. firepower. The North Vietnamese relearned the importance of dispersion and patience. They redistributed their forces to keep their most vulnerable units outside the range of U.S. artillery while moving their logistic system away from battle areas into sanctuaries relatively safe from aerial detection and strikes. Thus, they dusted off and applied many of the same methods that had proven useful