AUM NAMAH SHIVAYA
Prologue
War is an essential human activity. The great Greek Philosopher Heraclitus observes that war is the father of all things. His meaning is, everything that comes into existence does so through struggle, through conflict of one sort or another.
So, as a Soldier, you are the very root of creation. What an awesome responsibility and opportunity for yourself, your family, and your countrymen!
Without your skill conducting the art of war, your nation could not exist, your family could not be safe and expand, and you would be enslaved to contractions by one or more of the ideological forces fighting today to put you there.
Peace and safety are products of victory in war, success during struggle, favorable resolution of conflict. That is the only way we get to enjoy those pleasures. War itself is unavoidable and necessary.
There is one rational way to conduct war: win it. Peace and safety are earned by your success at war. War lost or war fought to a draw throws into existence a season of peril, great and small, not peace.
Study: The Learned Warrior
Study up to master the military arts, from small and large weapons fire, to small and large unit maneuver, to small and large intelligence operations, to battlefield tactics, to general strategics, to grand strategics, to statecraft generally and even cross-over to the other assets of statecraft — diplomacy and finance.
Pursue inquiry for your personal sake, for your profession’s sake, and for its own sake. Make inquiry a life-long habit, and follow where it leads you, right to the end, and without hesitation. Always expand, never contract, your range of inquiry. Expansion is life, contraction is death.
Study war histories to appreciate what was in the minds of the Commanders and their Soldiers, not for inspiring scenes of clash, glory, and defeat. The glory of victory is the successful application of military art in action by Commanders and Soldiers, not in fighting per se. The dejection of defeat is in errors of reporting by Scouts and judgement by Commanders and Soldiers, not in the loss of life or prestige per se.
War is an art, not a vision, hard work, not a lark, noble if won and ignoble if lost.
Learn geography first, study it carefully as if geography is your family or lover. Your whole being rises from and reposes in geography first, foremost, and forever. Geography is the ground of military arts in all five domains of military operations — land, water, cyber, air, space. Therefore, include in your land-force studies the conduct of military arts in naval, electrical, atmospheric, and space geographies.
Pay particular attention to the military strategic and tactical use of sea power motivated by sails full of wind. Considerations of warfare under sail will focus your appreciation of geography writ large. Thinking under sail, you will appreciate geography as the decisive factor in those large-and small-scale strategic and tactical considerations which arise in all five domains of conflict. Military arts transact multi-laterally across these domains, five interactive geographies: land, water, cyber, air, space.
Get as far as you can in these studies and do not abuse yourself for not getting farther than you can. Just do your best at it. That will make you happy. That is what any one of us should do. It is as well all any one of us can be expected to do.
A Soldier’s Reading List
Reminiscences
General of the Army Douglas MacArthur
R. E. Lee
Douglas Southall Freeman
Commentaries On The Gallic War (and here) (Wikipedia)
Roman Proconsul Julius Caesar
The Iliad, The Odyssey, The Aeneid
Homer and Virgil
Elements Of Military Art And Science and here and here
Henry Wager Halleck
The Influence Of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783
A. T. Mahan
Travels In Arabia Deserta, Volume One, Volume Two
Charles Montagu Doughty
Advice To War Presidents: A Remedial Course In Statecraft — excerpts here
Angelo M. Codevilla
Leftism Revisited: From deSade And Marx To Hitler And PolPot
Erik von Luehnelt-Leddihn
The Templars: Knights Of Christ
Régine Pernoud
The Geographical Pivot Of History
H. J. Mackinder
On The Plurality Of Civilizations
Feliks Koneczny
General Kenney Reports and here in PDF (31MB)
General George C. Kenney
MacArthur: 1941-1951 and here in PDF (46MB)
General Charles A. Willoughby
On the scale of Europe, MacArthur’s war took him roughly from the English Channel to the Persian Gulf, a distance at least twice that encompassed by Napoleon, Julius Caesar, or Alexander the Great in their most extended campaigns. When Gen. J. J. Twitty of the Hawaiian Intelligence Center remarked on the ease with which information could be obtained on the Normandy beaches or Anzio as compared with collecting terrain data on Tarawa, he voiced a complaint that was relevant all over the Pacific. To solve the problem of the nonexistent terrain studies, the necessary Baedekers of war, MacArthur’s G-2 had to start absolutely from scratch. Before the war was over in August 1945, G-2’s Allied Geographical Section, one of the great unappreciated workhorses of the war, had turned out a grand aggregate of 193,555 terrain studies, terrain handbooks, and special reports, most of which had to be done on forced printing deadlines and hurried to troops and staffs on fixed dates, agreed upon for irrevocable operations. Throughout most of the war the documents were flown from Australia hundreds and even thousands of miles to the front, on split-second schedules. The unmapped terrain of New Guinea and the other islands was more often than not just about as tough and tenacious as the Japanese themselves.
Von Clausewitz And Trinitarian Warfare
Christopher Bassford
Born Fighting
James H. Webb, Jr.
How The Scots Invented The Modern World
Arthur Herman
Scottish Highlanders
Charles MacKinnon of Dunakin
Brotherhood of the Bomb
Gregg Herken
Preparation: Training Field And Battle Field
Treat your barracks and billets, drill fields, and field exercises as magnificent homeschooling labs. Where else can you get free food, free clothing, free shelter, AND GET PAID while you school yourself and get schooled by your peers, NCOs, and Officers in the profession of arms? Your chosen profession, the profession of arms, is the world’s oldest profession in fact. You are the lucky ones. And it’s legal.
Millions of your countrymen spend tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, or go into debt, to get an education that very often, these days, is worthless. You have opportunities to learn on your own and be taught — not only as free but WITH PAY — skills and knowledge valuable to you now and through your following years right to the end.
Military training is a type of spiritual exercise. What you learn and put into practice here in your land-force military homeschooling labs counts even more in accounts kept on you by the Almighty.
Patience, carefulness, courage, scrutiny, truthfulness, resolution in action, calm during troubles, precision of aim and execution, self-scrutiny, team loyalty, unrelenting effort, finishing the job, humility in victory, unfailing cheerfulness, accepting responsibility for failure or defeat, strengthening the wayward and the fallen, having equal solicitude for the welfare of victors and vanquished . . . these military virtues build your character and therefore prestige on earth and even more your acceptability in heaven.
Alexander Suvorov, the Great Captain to Czarina Catherine the Great, told his Soldiers train hard, fight easy. This formula worked wonders for morale and therefore for war and battle outcomes. There is the narrow door to your success as a Soldier. The key to that door — training — is ever-expanding the range and depth of your knowledge. Use your precious time, spent here in homeschooling labs your countrymen graciously provide for you, to build your professional competence at conducting the art of war. This will be the ground of your prestige as an individual and team member of this U.S. Army fighting formation and will carry you head held high through the remaining years of your earthly career.
Freedom: The Personal, Spiritual, And National Starting And Goal Line
Start out where you want to end up.
A rookie Washington Redskins QB, Dwayne Haskins, is quoted to this effect: Satan’s Biggest Fear is for You to Become Everything God Created You to Be.
You want to be free because God created you as an embodiment of divine freedom. Each of us is an embodiment of freedom, divine freedom. Freedom is where we start out. Freedom is our nature at creation, in His image. It also is where we end up. Satan, The Devil, is a personification of all those influences on us which try to seduce us into thinking that we are not free, or that we need to become free, or that we cannot be free, or that freedom will come later, or that we are evil for even believing in freedom much less wanting it, or that we will have freedom one day when someone in government gives it to us, or that . . .
. . . you get the point, anything but the truth, which is that we ARE freedom from our beginning, you and I, that we have freedom as inalienable component of our creation in God’s Love, in His image, that our high calling in this life is to live in the strength of freedom that is ours by right of our inalienable nature. No one has authority to restrict, rescind, or reduce our freedom, yours and mine. We have no authority to obstruct or mutilate even our own freedom, much less the freedom of anyone else. Freedom is divine.
We are out there, our here, on God’s land of freedom, driving across it in this vehicle called body, interacting as one with other vehicles of the same name and general description, powered by this multi-owner institution called America, on our way home to our Creator, Who is Freedom. Our goal or purpose during this land nav? To laugh, to dance, and to sing. In freedom.
We start as freedom in freedom, we end as freedom in Freedom. Let no one convince you otherwise.
You supply the fuel which powers the journey. We call it national sovereignty. Some call it national security, but that is a misnomer because, in the words of GA MacArthur, in this world there is no security, only opportunity. In the same way we can say that, in this world there is no assurance, only freedom.
National sovereignty is the fuel you mine, collect, and distribute to yourself, your family, and your countrymen for their use investing the freedom we are to build, defend, and protect that freedom the more. A Soldier’s mission is a divine mission to support and defend their country’s sovereignty by protecting their divine personal and national freedom.
Epilogue
Yours is the highest calling, the most precious profession, in the affairs of men and of nations. You have answered the calling with your life, your property, and your sacred honor. Make the most of it. Study, prepare, and succeed at the profession of arms.
Basil Henry Liddell-Hart:
The profoundest truth of war is that the issue of battle is usually decided in the minds of the opposing commanders, not in the bodies of their men.
Homer:
The Speech of Sarpedon to Glaucus
Translated by Alexander Pope
Why boast we, Glaucus! our extended Reign,
Where Xanthus’ Streams enrich the Lycian Plain,
Our num’rous Herds that range the fruitful Field,
And Hills where Vines their purple Harvest yield,
Our foaming Bowls with purer Nectar crown’d,
Our Feasts enhanc’d with Music’s sprightly Sound?
Why on those Shores are we with Joy survey’d,
Admir’d as Heroes, and as Gods obey’d?
Unless great Acts superior Merit prove,
And vindicate the bount’ous Pow’rs above.
‘Tis ours, the Dignity they give, to grace;
The first in Valour, as the first in Place.
That when with wond’ring Eyes our martial Bands
Behold our Deeds transcending our Commands,
Such, they may cry, deserve the sov’reign State,
Whom those that envy, dare not imitate!
Could all our Care elude the gloomy Grave,
Which claims no less the fearful than the brave,
For Lust of Fame I should not vainly dare
In fighting Fields, nor urge thy Soul to War.
But since, alas! ignoble Age must come,
Disease, and Death’s inexorable Doom;
The Life which others pay, let us bestow,
And give to Fame what we to Nature owe;
Brave tho’ we fall, and honour’d if we live,
Or let us Glory gain, or Glory give!
Marine LTG John Archer Lejeune:
The key to combat effectiveness is unity — an esprit that characterizes itself in complete, irrevocable, mutual trust. Now my infantry trusts my artillery and engineers, and my artillery and engineers know this so they will go through hell itself before they let down the infantry. My infantry believe that with such support they are invincible — and they are.
This is called leaning on the artillery [and on the engineers].
Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man:
Know then thyself, presume not God to scan
The proper study of Mankind is Man.
Placed on this isthmus of a middle state,
A Being darkly wise, and rudely great:
With too much knowledge for the Sceptic side,
With too much weakness for the Stoic’s pride,
He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest;
In doubt to deem himself a God, or Beast;
In doubt his mind or body to prefer;
Born but to die, and reas’ning but to err;
Alike in ignorance, his reason such,
Whether he thinks too little, or too much;
Chaos of Thought and Passion, all confus’d;
Still by himself, abus’d or disabus’d;
Created half to rise and half to fall;
Great Lord of all things, yet a prey to all,
Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurl’d;
The glory, jest and riddle of the world.
Go, wondrous creature! mount where science guides,
Go, measure earth, weigh air, and state the tides;
Instruct the planets in what orbs to run,
Correct old time, and regulate the sun;
Go, soar with Plato to th’ empyreal sphere,
To the first good, first perfect, and first fair;
Or tread the mazy round his followers trod,
And quitting sense call imitating God;
As Eastern priests in giddy circles run,
And turn their heads to imitate the sun.
Go, teach Eternal Wisdom how to rule—
Then drop into thyself, and be a fool!
Steve Leonard: You Really Think I’m Irrelevant? LOL. A Letter To Clausewitz Haters From Beyond The Grave
Βασιλεία του Θεού
Sorry for the goofs in my response to Dr Graham. Here is, hopefully, a better rendition of it. Basically Dr. Van Creveld’s book discusses what he terms “non-trinitarian war” You may be more familiar with that concept via Bill Lind’s terminology of Fourth Generation War description. However it is termed, van Creveld’s book is well worth addition to the reading list of your recent post. Dr van Creveld has written many books covering a vast range of military subjects and in my humble opinion is a far better military historian than the late John Keegan.
At Amazon. At Wikipedia.
Excerpt from Wikipedia:
Clausewitz’s trinitarian model of war (a term of van Creveld’s) distinguishes between the affairs of the population, the army, and the government.[4] Van Creveld criticizes this philosophy as too narrow and state-focused, thus inapplicable to the study of those conflicts involving one or more non-state actors. Instead, he proposes five key issues of war:
By whom war is fought – whether by states or by non-state actors
What is war all about – the relationships between the actors, and between them and the non-combatants
How war is fought – issues of strategy and tactics
What war is fought for – whether to enhance national power, or as an end to itself
Why war is fought – the motivations of the individual soldier
I wonder whether van Creveld employs the locution non-state actors still. I used to use it. But I stopped doing that three years ago:
Now, the language of respect is not the language of an isolationist. And one using that language, if they mean it — and I have no doubt Donald and Melania Trump mean it — does not threaten consequences of disrespect. There are ways to instill hostile-impulse-extinguishing caution in a contemplating enemy without making threats, which always are a weak action. These ways usually involve a demonstration, a message, of some kind. It does not have to be dramatic or public. A simple glance across a table or tone on a telephone can be sufficient unto the need. But whatever it takes, a nation, especially a large and able nation, must maintain the respect of all other nations by the only way that is possible: make the others find it unreasonable to meddle with or attack you.
(That rubric, incidentally, applies when dealing with so-called non-state actors — to include those consigned, apparently, to irrationality — as much as it does to state actors. And in fact there are no non-state actors, especially of the Moslem persuasion, whose so-called religion they regard as itself a sovereign nation state, and the only legitimate one — nation and religion — into the bargain.)
FYI, I do not hold a doctorate, although I have earned more than one, just not officially, so the honorific Dr. is not one I can accept. I am ordained a Christian clergyman practicing as a Christian theologian, so if one wishes to use an honorific when addressing me — it is unnecessary as far as I am concerned; I am just as happy to be addressed as Hey, you! — The Rev. I can accept, but it is in no way necessary, much less required.
You left out a very important book on your reading list. That book is Martin Van Creveld’s The Transformation of War–a shocking omission.
Thanks for reading and commenting. You are welcome to review the volume here and to argue that its omission here is shocking. I am unfamiliar with the volume and its author.