Week 6.1 Wylie -Appendix A Excerpt from Military Strategy P 117-121 (1)
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59TAPPENDIX AExcerpt from “Reflections on the War in the Pacific”1ways to dissect a war in analyzing its strategy. It can be broken into Army, Navy, and Air Force; or it can beHERE ARE MANYdivided into defensive, defensive-offensive, and offensive; or it can be cut into military and non-military; or it can be divided interms of time. But there is another way one can slice up a war for purposes of analysis: it can be done in terms of the generaloperational patterns of the strategies.In doing this we shall discuss two operationally different kinds of strategies and we must employ descriptive adjectives notnormally used in strategic matters. The classifications will be “sequential” and “cumulative” strategies.Normally we consider a war as a series of discrete steps or actions, with each one of this series of actions growing naturally out of,and dependent upon, the one which preceded it. The total pattern of all the discrete or separate actions makes up, serially, the entiresequence of the war. If at any stage of the war one of these actions had happened differently, then the remainder of the sequence wouldhave had a different pattern. The sequence would have been interrupted and altered.The two great drives across the Pacific, MacArthur’s campaign in the Southwest Pacific and the Central Pacific drive from Hawaiito the coast of China, can be analyzed as sequential strategies. Each one of these was composed of a series of discrete steps and eachstep could clearly be seen ahead of time, could clearly be appraised in terms of its expected result, and the result in turn would lead tothe next step, the next position to be taken or the next action to be planned. This is what is meant by reference to a sequential strategy.But there is another way to prosecute a war. There is a type of warfare in which the entire pattern is made up of a collection oflesser actions, but these lesser or individual actions are not sequentially interdependent. Each individual one is no more than a singlestatistic, an isolated plus or a minus, in arriving at the final result.Psychological warfare might be such a matter, for instance, or economic warfare. No one action is completely dependent on theone which preceded it. The thing that counts is the cumulative effect. As a military example of this cumulative strategy the submarinecampaign in the Pacific is superb.The tonnage war waged by the American submarines in the Pacific is quite unlike the serial, the sequential, type of strategy. In atonnage war it is not possible to forecast, with any degree of accuracy, the result of any specific action.Any such war as these tonnage wars is an accumulation of more or less random individual victories. Any single submarine actionis only one independent element in the cumulative effect of the total campaign.So that in the Pacific, from 1941 to 1945, actually we conducted two separate wars against Japan. We conducted the sequentialstrategy campaigns, our drives across the Pacific to the coast of Asia and up to the shores of the Empire. And apparently quite apartfrom that we conducted a cumulative strategy aimed at Japan’s economy. Oddly enough, these two went along together in time butessentially independently in their day-to-day activity.We were able, with some degree of success, to predict in advance the outcome of the sequential strategy. We were not able, or atleast we did not take advantage of whatever ability we had, to predict the result of the cumulative strategy. Somewhere along in 1944we brought Japan, in large measure by pressure of this cumulative strategy, to a condition in which she had only two alternatives: togive in, or to approach national suicide. We are not, even today, able to tell precisely when that took place. But it did take place. Japanstarted the war with about six million tons of merchant shipping. During the early years of the war she acquired almost four millionmore. And by late 1944 nearly nine of this total of ten million tons had been destroyed. Japan had long since passed her point of noreturn. But we seemed not to know it, and possibly the Japanese did not know it.The point to be made is this: there are actually two very different kinds of strategies to be used in war. One is the sequential, theseries of visible, discrete steps, each dependent on the one that preceded it. The other is the cumulative, the less perceptible minuteaccumulation of little items piling one on top of the other until at some unknown point the mass of accumulated actions may be largeenough to be critical. They are not incompatible strategies, they are not mutually exclusive. Quite the opposite. They are usuallyinterdependent in their strategic result.The sequential strategies all of us probably understand; the cumulative strategies possibly we do not. The latter, the cumulative, hasCopyright 2014. Naval Institute Press.All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law.EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 5/9/2023 12:28 PM via NAVAL WAR COLLEGEAN: 786317 ; Joseph WYLIE.; Military Strategy : A General Theory of Power ControlAccount: s8889344.main.ehost
60long been a characteristic of war at sea. But there has been no conscious analytical differentiation of this cumulative warfare from thesequential in any of the major writings on strategy; and there is no major instance in which a cumulative strategy, operating by itself,has been successful. The French, for instance, were long addicted to their at sea, but they never had it pay off inguerre de coursedecisive victory by itself. The Germans have twice concentrated all their maritime effort on a cumulative strategy and have twice seenit fail.But when these cumulative strategies have been used in conjunction with a sequential strategy, directed at the main object of thewar, there are many instances in which the strength of the cumulative strategy has meant the difference between success or failure ofthe sequential. History abounds with examples in which a comparatively weak sequential strategy was enabled to reach victory byvirtue of the strength of the cumulative strategy behind it. The Yorktown Campaign, the Peninsula Campaign in Portugal, or our ownWar between the States are three that come to mind. The First World War is another example. In this last war we seem not to haveappreciated the strength of our cumulative strategy against Japan, operating as it did in support of the direct thrust to the critical goal.Recognition of these two basically different kinds of strategy presents a new challenge to us, a challenge that could be a vitallyimportant one. Our strategic success in the future may be measured by the skill with which we are able to balance our sequential andour cumulative efforts toward the most effective and least costly attainment of our goals. If we could judge the progress and the effectof our cumulative strategy, not only would we control an important element of strategy which up until now we have been forced toleave to chance, but we might more effectively shape the conditions existing when the war is over.So, two specific suggestions: we should recognize the existence and the power of these cumulative strategies and integrate themmore carefully into our basic plans; and we should study them more closely than we have done in order that we may be able todetermine whether or not they profitably could be critical, and if they could, then to identify the points in their development at whichthey do become critical determinants in the progress of the war. When we do that we will be able to use them more efficiently andeconomically than we have in the past.. This essay was originally published in the U.S. Naval Institute , vol. 78, no. 4 (April 1952), pp. 351–361.1ProceedingsEBSCOhost - printed on 5/9/2023 12:28 PM via NAVAL WAR COLLEGE. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use
61OAPPENDIX B“On Maritime Strategy”1half century there have been two generally accepted approaches to the study of maritime strategy. The first hasVER THE LASTbeen an analysis of the component elements of maritime strength, with Mahan’s classification of these as geography, navalpower, merchant marine, and the like usually serving as the basis for this kind of study. The second approach, more prevalent in ourgeneration, is the discussion of strategy in terms of specific types of operations such as fast carrier strikes, anti-submarine warfare, ororganized overseas transport. I think both of these avenues of approach tend to obscure, to some extent, the coherent form of the basicstrategy that lies between these two, the strategy that grows from the components to give continuity and direction to the operations. Itis this middle ground that I shall explore, the area in which a basic element of strength is transformed by an idea into a positive action.It is a sailor’s concept of strategy, what it is, how it works, to what end it is followed, and what its problems are.In doing this I shall present the subject from those four aspects that seem to me necessary for an adequately rounded appreciationboth of the underlying idea and of the translation of that idea into practical and useful results. These four aspects are, first, a theory ofmaritime strategy; second, past experience in the use of maritime strategy; third, some of the factors that complicate its use in our time;and fourth, our contemporary use of military power and the tendencies with respect to maritime strategy.I. A THEORY OF MARITIME STRATEGYThe aim of any war is to establish some measure of control over the enemy. The pattern of action by which this control is sought isthe strategy of the war. There are many types and levels of strategies, and many ways in which they may be classified. But since thesubject of this discussion is maritime strategy, the classifications we shall use have already been determined. The three main streams ofstrategic thought in this sense are maritime strategy, continental strategy, and, more recently on the scene, air strategy.Here, at the beginning of this discussion, it should be emphasized that clear-cut separations are artificial. In practice there is, andmust be, a good deal of overlap and merging; the strategies are deliberately set apart from each other in this treatment of the subjectonly for purposes of study and analysis.I use the term continental strategy to indicate a pattern of employment of armed forces in which the major and critical part of theaction to establish control over the enemy is directed against his armies along a central land axis. All other efforts are in support of thecentral drive of this continental strategy. In spite of the descriptive title that I have elected to use for this type of strategy, theinvolvement of an entire continent is not necessarily implied.The term air strategy I use to indicate an over-all war strategy in which the decision is sought primarily by air action, withpredominant emphasis on strategic bombardment. All other efforts are to a greater or lesser degree subordinate to that.A maritime strategy is one in which the world’s maritime communications systems are exploited as the main avenues by way ofwhich strength may be applied to establish control over one’s enemies.Maritime strategy normally consists of two major phases. The first, and it must be first, is the establishment of control of the sea.After an adequate control of the sea is gained comes the second phase, the exploitation of that control by projection of power into oneor more selected critical areas of decision on the land.Too often the first or blue-water phase of maritime strategy is regarded as the whole process rather than no more than the necessaryfirst half. Most naval history, for example, concerns itself with the struggles for control of the sea, the naval battles, the protection ofcommerce, and the blockade in one form or another.This phase, also, is the one that attracts the greater part of our own professional attention, and it is the phase that most landsmenaccept as the entire concept when one introduces the subject of maritime strategy.Within the first phase, the control-of-the-sea segment of the over-all pattern, there are initially two components of control. Theywill be considered separately for analytic purposes, although the actual conduct in war may so closely interweave them that theseparate goals may not be superficially apparent. One of these components is ensuring one’s own use of the sea; the other is denial tothe enemy of his use of the sea. At least in the early stages of the struggle for control, these two goals can be analytically consideredEBSCOhost - printed on 5/9/2023 12:28 PM via NAVAL WAR COLLEGE. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use