SAASS 600/10
Some Principles of Maritime Strategy Precis
Some Principles of Maritime Strategy by Sir Julian Corbett begins by setting out the utility program and the limitations of the theoretical approach to war. Corbett emphasizes Clausewitz and grasps the true nature of Clausewitz ’ s analysis of the relationship of war and politics. Corbett recognizes that specify objects produce express wars. Corbett argued that strategists should first “ determine the nature of the war, to be surely that they do not mistake it for something nor seek to make of it something which from its implicit in conditions it can never be. ” Limited maritime threats could play a significant function in complicating the overall strategic perceptions of a major continental opponent fighting a war for high stakes. Corbett argues for giving the truthful ship protection affair of cruisers the maximal precedence .
Data : Corbett, Sir Julian S. Some Principles of Maritime Strategy, Edited by Eric Grove ( Annapolis : US Naval Institute, 1988 )
generator : Sir Julian Corbet is considered to be Britain ’ second greatest nautical strategist, and however he came from a non-naval background. He studied law at Trinity College and became a barrister. He became a novelists, and his works had a maritime focus. His beginning serious diachronic write was a two volume work on Sir Francis Drake, Drake and Tudor Navy ( 1898 ). He was a initiation member of the Navy Records Society. In 1902 Corbett was invited to the Royal Naval College to give lectures to the War Course. The purpose behind having a civilian teach history at the RN College was that he would emphasize the political factors that “ deflected ” strategy. Corbett published England in the Mediterranean: A Study of the Rise and Influence of British Power Within the Straights, 1603 – 1713 in 1903. Corbett published a sour on Nelson, The Campaign of Trafalgar, in 1909. Some Principles appeared in 1911 .
context : Corbett wrote during the rise of the HMS Dreadnought and the exploitation of the electric ray, submarine, airplane, and the radio .
telescope :
attest : Historical study, primarily british naval history .
central proposition : The object of naval war must constantly be immediately or indirectly either to secure the dominate of the sea or to prevent the enemy from security it .
other major Propositions : naval scheme does not exist as a separate branch of cognition. It is merely a section of a division of the artwork of war. War is a shape of political sexual intercourse, a continuance of foreign politics which begins when force is introduced to attain our ends .
review :
· Internal Consistency and Comprehensiveness –Corbett failed to see that technical foul development, notably the perfection of the submarines as a oceangoing weapon, would soon force a new emphasis on the direct defense mechanism of shipping when war with Germany actually occurred. Corbett could not be expected to foresee the full and revolutionist potential of the airplane. Corbett addresses defensive structure against invasion and combined operations. defined, categorized, explain, connect, complete ?
· External Validity – The rapid march of engineering ( submarines and torpedoes ) has not invalidated the basic theory of his section on the constitution of fleets. Corbett ’ s cerebral model, which distinguished the struggle function from the control affair and both from costal activities is of considerable aid in helping make sense of the different roles of late-twentieth-century naval forces .
Comparison and Synthesis : Corbett follows Mahan in his vehemence on independent evanesce operations, but he parts company with Mahan on the doubt of concentration and dispersion .
importance :
personal significance :
Part I Theory of War
The Theoretical Study of War – Its Use and Limitations
· “ [ Theory ’ s ] chief hardheaded respect is that it can assist a capable man to acquire a broad expectation whereby he may be the surer his plan shall cover all the grind, and whereby he may with greater celerity and certainty seize all the factors of a sudden situation. ” ( 4 )
· “ Theory is, in fact, a question of education and deliberation, and not of execution at all. ” ( 6 )
· “ [ Theory ] can at least determine the normal… Having determined the normal, we are at once in a stronger position. Any proposal can be compared with it, and we can proceed to discuss clearly the weight of the factors which prompt us to depart from the normal. ” ( 9 )
· “ We are accustomed, partially for convenience and partially from lock of scientific habit of think, to speak of naval strategy and military scheme as though they were distinct branches of cognition which had no common flat coat. It is the hypothesis of war which brings out their intimate relation. It reveals that embracing them both is a larger strategy which regard the fleet and army as one weapon, which coordinates their legal action, and indicates the lines on which each must move to realize the wax power of both. It will direct us to assign to each its proper function in a plan of war ; it will enable each service to realize the better limitations and the possibilities of the routine with which it is charged, and how and when its own necessities must give direction to a higher or more pressing need of the other. ” ( 10 – 11 )
· “ It discloses, in short-circuit, that naval strategy is not a thing by itself, that its problems can seldom or never be solved on naval considerations alone, but that it is only a part of maritime strategy – the higher learning which teaches us that for a nautical express to make successful war and to realize her extra lastingness, army and united states navy must be used and thought of as instruments no less well connected that are the three arms alone. ” ( 11 )
Theory of War
· “ Naval strategy is but that share of it which determines the movement of the fleet when maritime scheme has determined what contribution the fleet must play in relation to the action of the land forces ; for it hardly needs saying that it about impossible that a war can be decided by naval action alone. ” ( 15 )
· “ The overriding refer, then, of maritime scheme is to determine the reciprocal relations of your united states army and navy in a design of war. ” ( 16 )
· “ War is a continuance of policy, a shape of political intercourse in which we fight battles rather of writing notes. ” ( 18 )
· “ Theory formed upon the abstract or absolute mind of war would not cover the land, and consequently failed to give what was required for hardheaded purposes. ” ( 25 )
· “ Clausewitz ’ s difficulty in adopting his abstract hypothesis as a work rule was that his practical judgment could not forget that war had not begun with the Revolutionary era, nor was it likely to end with it. If that earned run average had changed the conduct of war, it must be presumed that war would change against with other times and other conditions. ” ( 25 – 26 )
· “ If a theory of war was to be of any use as a hardheaded guide it must cover and explain not only the extreme demonstration of aggression which he himself had witnessed, but every expression that had occurred in the past or was likely to recur in the future. ” ( 26 )
· “ The policy is always the aim ; war is alone the means by which we obtain the aim, and the means must always keep the end in view. ” ( 27 )
· “ The first value, then, of his theory of war is that it gives a clear line on which we may proceed to determine the nature of a war in which we are about to engage, and to ensure that we do not try to apply to one nature of war any particular course of operations plainly because they have proved successful in another nature of war. ” ( 28 )
Nature of Wars – Offensive and Defensive
· “ The categorization “ offensive and defensive ” implies that offensive and defensive are mutually exclusive ideas, whereas the accuracy is, and it is a fundamental truth of war, that they are mutually complementary. ” ( 33 )
Nature of Wars – Limited and Unlimited
· “ Whatever the aim, the full of life and overriding question was the volume with which the emotional state of the state was absorbed in its attainment. ” ( 42 )
· The deviation between ‘ limited ’ and ‘ unlimited ’ meant “ there might be a limit beyond which it would be bad policy to spend that vigor, a charge at which, long before your force was exhausted or even in full developed, it would be wiser to abandon your object rather than to spend more upon it. ” ( 43 )
Limited War and Maritime Empires
· “ For a true limited aim we must have not only the power of isolation, but besides the power by a impregnable home defense of barring an unlimited counterstroke. ” ( 57 )
· “ Limited war is merely permanently possible to island Powers or between Powers which are separated by sea, and then merely when the Power desire circumscribed war is able to command the ocean to such a degree as to be able not only to isolate the distant object, but besides to render impossible the invasion of his home territory. ” ( 57 )
· “ Limited wars do not turn upon the armed strength of the belligerents, but upon the come of that military capability which they are able or bequeath to bring to bear at the decisive point. ” ( 58 )
· “ A war may be limited physically by the strategic isolation of the object, equally well as morally by its comparative unimportance. ” ( 59 )
Wars of Intervention – Limited Interference in Unlimited War
· “ There were those designed strictly for the conquest of the objects for which we went to war, which were normally colonial or distant oversea territory ; and second, operations more or less upon the european seaside designed not for permanent wave conquest, but as a method of disturbing our enemy ’ randomness plans and strengthening the hands of our allies and our own position. ” ( 61 )
Conditions of Strength in Limited War
· “ The elements of forte in limit war are close analogous to those broadly built-in in defense. ” ( 72 )
· “ Limited war permits the practice of the defensive without its common drawbacks to a academic degree that is impossible in inexhaustible war. ” ( 72 )
· “ [ Moltke ] held that the strongest form of war – that is, the form which economically makes for the highest development of lastingness in a given force – is strategic offensive combined with tactical defensive. ” ( 73 )
· “ however big the controlling influence of the political aim, it must never obscure the fact that it is by fighting we have to gain our end. ” ( 86 )
Part II Theory of Naval War
Theory of the Object – Command of the Sea
· “ The object of naval war must always be directly or indirectly either to secure the command of the ocean or to prevent the enemy from securing it. ” ( 91 )
· “ Command of the sea, consequently, means nothing but the control of maritime communications, whether for commercial or military purposes. The object of naval war is the dominance of communications, and not, as in kingdom war, the conquest of territory. The deviation is fundamental. ” ( 94 )
· “ Whereas on land the summons of economic imperativeness, at least in the modern invention of war, should only begin after decisive victory, at sea it starts mechanically from the first. indeed such blackmail may be the only means of forcing the decisiveness we seek, as will appear more distinctly when we come to deal with the early fundamental deviation between land and sea warfare. ” ( 101 )
· “ Wars are not decided entirely by military and naval effect. finance is barely less important. When early things are equal, it is the longer purse that wins. ” ( 102 )
· “ Framing a plan of war or campaign, it must be taken that command may exist in assorted states or degrees, each of which has its special possibilities and limit. It may be general or local anesthetic, and it may be permanent wave or temporary. ” ( 104 )
Theory of the Means – the Constitution of Fleets
· “ On cruisers depends our exercise of control ; on the struggle fleet depends the security of control. ” ( 115 )
· “ The object of naval war is to control maritime communications. In order to exercise that control effectively we must have a numerous class of vessels particularly adapted for avocation. But their power of exercising control is in proportion to our degree of command, that is, to our ability of preventing their operations being interfered with by the enemy. Their own ability of resistor is in inverse proportion to their baron of exercising control ; that is to say, the more numerous and better adapted they are for preying on department of commerce and transports, the weak will be their individual fight power. ” ( 117 )
Theory of the Method – Concentration and Dispersal of Force
· “ From the decimal point of see of the method acting by which its ends are obtained, scheme is much described as the art of assembling the extreme force at the right time and station ; and this method acting is called “ concentration. ” ( 128 )
· “ Concentration, in fact, implies a continual conflict between coherence and reach, and for practical purposes it is the correct alteration of those two tensions – always shifting in military unit – which constitutes the greater separate of practical strategy. ” ( 132 )
· “ The ideal concentration, in light, is an appearance of weakness that covers a reality of strength. ” ( 152 )
Part III Conduct of Naval War
Introductory
· “ In the lead of naval war all operations will be found to relate to two broad classes of object. The one is to obtain or dispute the control of the sea, and the early to exercise such control of communications as we have, whether the complete command has been secured or not. ” ( 161 )
· Methods of securing command – by obtaining a decisiveness, by blockade ; methods of disputing command – principle of “ fleet in being ”, minor counter-attacks ; methods of exercising dominate : department of defense against invasion, attack and defensive structure of department of commerce, and attack, defensive structure, and patronize of military expeditions. ( 165 – 166 )
Methods of Securing Command
· “ What the maxim [ seeking out the foe ’ s fleet ] very means is that we should endeavor from the first to secure contact in the best military position for bringing about a accomplished decision in our favor, and a soon as the other parts of our war design, military or political, will permit. ” ( 180 )
· “ We can never say that close blockade is better than assailable, or the rearward. It must constantly be a count of judgment. ” ( 200 )
· “ The general conclusion, then, is that however high may be the strictly naval and strategic reasons for adopting open blockade as the best means of securing a decision against the enemy ’ mho evanesce, yet the inevitable trespass of the ulterior object in the form of trade protective covering or the security of military expeditions will seldom leave us wholly loose to use the overt method. ” ( 208
Methods of Disputing Command
· “ A Power excessively watery to win dominate by offensive operations may yet succeed in holding the command in dispute by assuming a general defensive attitude. ” ( 209 )
· “ Both on land at at ocean defense means of course taking certain measures to defer a decision until military or political developments therefore far redress the libra of forte that we are able to pass to the offensive. ” ( 211 )
· “ At sea the main conception is avoiding decisive natural process by strategic or tactical activeness, so as to keep our fleet in being till the site develops in our favor. ” ( 211 )
· “ The artwork of gunman war has developed very quickly. Its range and offensive ability have increased in a higher ratio than the means of resisting it. ” ( 231 )
· The unproved value of submarines merely deepens the mist which overhangs the following naval war. From a strategic point of opinion we can say no more than that we have to count with a new factor, which gives a raw possibility to minor counter-attack. ” ( 231 )
Methods of Exercising Command
· “ In methods of exercising command are included all operations not directly concerned with securing command or with preventing its being secured by the foe. We engage in exercising command whenever we conduct operations which are directed not against the enemy ’ s battle-fleet, but to using sea communications for our own purposes, or to interfering with the enemy ’ south habit of them. ” ( 233 )
· “ War being, as it is, a complex union of naval, military, political, fiscal, and moral factors, its actuality can seldom offer to a naval staff a clean slate on which strategic problems can be solved by well-turned syllogisms. ” ( 234 )
· “ If we have gained accomplished instruction, no invasion can take position, nor will it be attempted. If we have lost it wholly no invasion will be necessity, since quite apart from the threat of invasion, we must make peace on the best terms we can get. ” ( 239 )
· “ The most prolific areas always attracted the strongest attack, and therefore required the strongest defense mechanism ; and between the fertile and the sterile areas it was possible to draw a line which for strategic purposes was definite and constant. ” ( 261 )
· “ Where attack is most to be feared, there refutation is easiest. ” ( 261 )
· “ The vulnerability of trade is in inverse ration to its volume, and facility of attack means facility of defense. ” ( 278 )
· “ By no conceivable means is it potential to give trade absolute protection. ” ( 279 )
· “ The attack and defense of oversea expeditions are governed in large bill by the principles of assail and defense of craft. In both cases it is a question of restraint of communications, and if we control them for one aim, we control them for the other. ” ( 280 )
· “ No topic what fleet subscribe the landing operations may require, it should never be given in an imperfectly commanded ocean to an extent which will deny the possibility of a covering squadron being left free for independent naval action. ” ( 294 )