Military History: Which high ranking American officer...

rjaypeters · Post by **rjaypeters** » Sat Feb 05, 2011 1:54 am

Diogenes wrote:The initial plan was to bomb their nuke building facilities and leave the rest of the country alone. Even the Russian Nuke Scientists thought we would do this and every day lived in fear that American Bombers would be flying over the horizon to hit them.

The later plan of bombing the entire Soviet Union was a fall back position because of the failure to act early enough to implement the original plan.

Ignoring the concept of just war seems to be an assumption of the majority of this thread. Should we kill those who could conceivably kill us? And where do we begin? Or stop?

Betruger · Post by **Betruger** » Sat Feb 05, 2011 2:47 am

ladajo wrote: What book are you talking about?

Strategy

hanelyp · Post by **hanelyp** » Sat Feb 05, 2011 3:24 am

One critical difference between the Soviet Union and the current terrorist enemy: The Soviet Union had leadership with a healthy sense of self preservation and fear of what we could do if sufficiently provoked. However much they wished our destruction, they feared direct open war with us more. Islamic terrorists have no such fear of us.

ladajo · Post by **ladajo** » Sat Feb 05, 2011 5:14 am

Betruger wrote:
ladajo wrote: What book are you talking about?
Strategy

Oh, Liddell Hart's. That expains it. Not exactly state of the art. Also, not used in current curriculum. Try Handel's "Master's of War".
The operational level of war is a child of WWII.
Funny, folks in the business still argue over the definitions of strategic, operational and tactical. I guess it keeps them employed..."publish or perish"

Thanks, and sorry I missed that above.

ladajo · Post by **ladajo** » Sat Feb 05, 2011 5:24 am

@Diogenes:

No question about it. The Battle of Midway is an example. Of COURSE i'd rather be lucky than good any day of the week, but a person who plans are entirely based on luck is foolish.

Actually, we won Midway because the Japanese had a really bad plan, almost to the point of no plan short of, "Go and capture Midway, the Americans can not stop you." Talk about phase locking...
Of course, they did not even think about how they would even hold Midway if they got it.
Try reading Parshall and Tully's "Shattered Sword", slow but very informative.

rjaypeters · Post by **rjaypeters** » Sat Feb 05, 2011 9:58 am

To some, crippling surprise attacks look good, but there are more things going on than we think. The people who designed the strategy of containment against the Soviet Union had hope in the future. Our current problems are those of victory. This victory extends to the people of the Soviet Union: most of us survived the Cold War. Many did not, but it was a war, yes?

The proposed attack of the Soviet Union would have killed how many people not involved in the decision process or actual fighting?

Where would have been the justice of such an un-provoked war?

Oh, and let's not forget some axioms of history:

"The moral arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice." - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

We, or our children, or our grand-children, reap what we sow.

MSimon · Post by **MSimon** » Sat Feb 05, 2011 10:51 am

ladajo wrote:@Msimon:

BTW, and I say this with all due respect, if you haven't read Strategy you are ignorant (totally) in military affairs. Could you be a geometry expert without Euclid?

That book was required reading by every member of the US Military for 5 or 10 years. Every member. From private to a four star. For all I know it still may be on the required list. And you haven't read it? Shame on you. I read it at lest once a year. Since about 1980.
Are you talking about Summer's "On Strategy"? I thought that he wrote that in the 90's?
What book are you talking about?

Strategy by Hart. It is actually a series of essays started in 1925 (in the aftermath of the WW1 disaster) and expanded over time.

Summer's book was not too bad. He did sorta get that our center of gravity was Congress/popular opinion and not the battlefield. I'd have to go back over it again to remember why I didn't like it about 10 years after first reading it. On first read I liked it a lot.

MSimon · Post by **MSimon** » Sat Feb 05, 2011 11:02 am

ladajo,

If the military is no longer looking at Hart because he is outmoded I believe they are mistaken. Poorly written maybe - after all the book is a series of accretions. But outmoded? Doubtful.

The one area in which he is weak is insurgent warfare. But he does look at it some.

I think the later chapters which codify the material presented in earlier chapters to be most gratifying. And he gives some very useful ideas in terms of using the indirect approach in politics.

rjaypeters · Post by **rjaypeters** » Sat Feb 05, 2011 1:44 pm

All this Cold War talk is so Twentieth-Century. Let's deal with the present:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/12/world ... JcqPFXINAw

Doesn't North Korea warrant the "bomb them back to the Stone Age" treatment before they can truly threaten us?

Diogenes · Post by **Diogenes** » Sat Feb 05, 2011 2:54 pm

rjaypeters wrote:
Diogenes wrote:The initial plan was to bomb their nuke building facilities and leave the rest of the country alone. Even the Russian Nuke Scientists thought we would do this and every day lived in fear that American Bombers would be flying over the horizon to hit them.

The later plan of bombing the entire Soviet Union was a fall back position because of the failure to act early enough to implement the original plan.
Ignoring the concept of just war seems to be an assumption of the majority of this thread. Should we kill those who could conceivably kill us? And where do we begin? Or stop?

We begin with survival. It is our duty to survive or it is our duty to die so that others might survive.

Never before in the History of mankind had a weapon been developed which could utterly eradicate an entire continent of people, and leave the land uninhabitable.

Given the history of both nations, we at our most evil (including slavery and the Indian wars) Never killed so many people as did the soviets. We were relatively merciful compared to them.

With that in mind, it was our DUTY to deprive them of the ability to kill millions.

As I've said before, Everyone is now saying we should have stopped Hitler early. I'm saying we should have stopped Stalin Early, and we had the advantage of Hindsight regarding Hitler.

Diogenes · Post by **Diogenes** » Sat Feb 05, 2011 2:59 pm

ladajo wrote:@Diogenes:
No question about it. The Battle of Midway is an example. Of COURSE i'd rather be lucky than good any day of the week, but a person who plans are entirely based on luck is foolish.
Actually, we won Midway because the Japanese had a really bad plan, almost to the point of no plan short of, "Go and capture Midway, the Americans can not stop you." Talk about phase locking...
Of course, they did not even think about how they would even hold Midway if they got it.
Try reading Parshall and Tully's "Shattered Sword", slow but very informative.

I was referring to the Lucky circumstance of the Lost Squadron(s) arriving after the Japanese had already shot the previous wave out of the air. Arriving to find the Japanese trying to refuel and rearm their aircraft, they blew the crap out of the Japanese Aircraft carriers. Something they would not have been able to do had everyone arrived when they were supposed to.

The Japanese may not have prepared adequately for their intended goal, but it really was a bit of good luck for the US that things worked out as they did.

Diogenes · Post by **Diogenes** » Sat Feb 05, 2011 3:02 pm

rjaypeters wrote:All this Cold War talk is so Twentieth-Century. Let's deal with the present:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/12/world ... JcqPFXINAw

Doesn't North Korea warrant the "bomb them back to the Stone Age" treatment before they can truly threaten us?

Would have been a great plan if we had done it prior to letting the Russians and the Chinese develop Nuclear arsenals of their own. Shooting a sidekick makes a lot more sense BEFORE the main guys obtain guns to point at you.

MSimon · Post by **MSimon** » Sat Feb 05, 2011 4:14 pm

We begin with survival. It is our duty to survive or it is our duty to die so that others might survive.

Making enemies is not conducive to long term survival.

Surrender before fighting is the best strategy - if you can obtain it.

The best strategy so demoralizes the enemy that no fighting is necessary.

Finesse is better than brute force. Something emphasized in Hart's Strategy.

MSimon · Post by **MSimon** » Sat Feb 05, 2011 4:17 pm

And then there is the collateral damage: everyone who is capable goes nuclear, i.e. you get to the current situation 40 years sooner.

rjaypeters · Post by **rjaypeters** » Sat Feb 05, 2011 6:05 pm

Diogenes wrote:Would have been a great plan if we had done it prior to letting the Russians and the Chinese develop Nuclear arsenals of their own. Shooting a sidekick makes a lot more sense BEFORE the main guys obtain guns to point at you.

The United States has the world's most powerful military (arguably the most powerful in history) and you propose...not to use it?!

Let's see...The Russians probably don't give a flying leap for the North Koreans, these days. The Chinese? They care more, especially since North Korea is on their border. Also, the Chinese find North Korea useful for keeping the rest of the world off balance.

I bet if the United States pre-offers and executes a "you break it - you own it" humanitarian operation after de-nuclearizating and decapitating the North Korean leadership, the Chinese would accede (would the Chinese pay for it just to keep the North Korean refugees off Chinese soil? Hmmm).

Also, like General LeMay, I didn't say go nuclear on them, far too messy. The USAF alone has plenty of weapons with non-nuclear explosives to get the job done. A blogger I read calls it a "JDAM party."

Where is the courage of your convictions? The North Korean regime is on par, at least, with Stalin's Soviet Union and even more unpredictable in future action. North Korea probably won't become as dangerous as the Soviet Union was, but dangerous enough (see the linked article above) to warrant a pre-emptive strike.

I think proponents of Soviet forcible de-nuclearization who shy away from proposing the same for North Korea are not being consistent.

Re: MSimon's point of collateral damage. South Korea would breath the worlds greatest sigh of relief for North Korean regime change/denuclearization. The South would receive millions of refugees, see my answer above. Then, of course, there would the convention war to protect South Korea from the die-hard North Koreans who would want revenge...