Search Results for: Urban Warfare

Note: We’re revisiting some of our most popular material from the past 10 months for our newer readers; this was originally posted May 21, 2014. Enjoy!

By Major Matt Cavanaugh

The other day I had a valuable email back-and-forth with a professional acquaintance on teaching strategy.  We differed on several points, but there was quite a bit of general agreement as well.  One point where we were in violent concurrence was on the influence of strategic culture on tactics.  I feel that culture has a bit more influence on warfare than my counterpart does – but concede the broad point that different strategic cultures often gravitate toward a particular “best” tactical approach.  These similar choices can also be seen beyond culture – they can be seen across time.

The result is that, paraphrasing the comment often attributed (but never proven) to Mark Twain, “warfare does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.”  Sir Michael Howard once said much the same, “[f]or after all allowances have been made for historical differences, wars still resemble each other more than they resemble any other human activity.”  Even across time, the basics in land warfare are often the same.  Journalist Sebastian Junger, in his book War, remarks on these fundamental tactical principles – and is worth considering at length:

“In a war…soldiers gravitate toward whatever works best with the least risk. At that point combat stops being a grand chess game between generals and becomes a no-holds-barred experiment in pure killing. As a result, much of modern military tactics is geared towards maneuvering the enemy into a position where they can essentially be massacred from safety. It sounds dishonorable only if you imagine that modern war is about honor; it’s not. It’s about winning, which means killing the enemy on the most unequal terms possible. Anything less simply results in the loss of more of your own men…There are two ways to tilt the odds in an otherwise fair fight: ambush the enemy with overwhelming force or use weapons that cannot be countered.” (p. 140)