Strategy and Survival
WATSON, MARK S.
Strategy and Survival Deterrent or Defense. By B. H. Liddell Hart. Praeger. 257 pp. $4.95. Reviewed by Mark S. Watson Military correspondent, Baltimore "Sun" THE TRAINED WARRIOR is expected to...
...Never corner an opponent and thus rouse him to desperation...
...The point of the citation is that all these ideas were enumerated 2,400 years ago by Sun Tzu in the first known study of war's problems...
...Keep cool...
...They are still valid, and usually still forgotten...
...Upon that theme Captain B. H. Liddell Hart, one of the most respected military analysts and prophets, presents his newest study of the West's effort to maintain the peace...
...George Kennan self-righteousness...
...And, like many others, he questions whether, once "small" atomic weapons are used at all, their hideous big brothers will not inexorably follow and thus bring the total destruction which the "small" weapons were thought to avert...
...Hart offers some useful adaptations and extensions of these views, consistently counseling patience, which is not a Western characteristic, and warning against the Western passion for counting on the finality of a signed-and-sealed agreement—which "is often most precarious because its fixity makes it less adjustable to changing conditions...
...He surveys the physical resources of the nations and—in some respects more important—the characters, hopes and suspicions of the peoples, for in them rather than in weapons are the seeds of conflict...
...Army and numerous civilian thinkers have long insisted) actually stimulate a persistent enemy to "small-bite" aggression with non-atomic weapons and tactics...
...Study war and learn from its history...
...It also must aim at an adequate defense, should war come anyway...
...But with Russia presumably making progress toward like development, and with no certainty that tactical atomic weapons are markedly better for defense than for offense, Hart doubts their continued merit as weapons of deterrence...
...Keep patient...
...he lists five historic "death-knells" by distinguished British leaders—and five resuscitations...
...A great quality of the writer is his ability to present vigorous military ideas in terms which fascinate the thoughtful layman as much as the professional...
...How little the fundamentals of military policy change with the centuries is sharply indicated in Hart's epilogue, in which there is a listing of elementary principles for guidance...
...In the latter area, Hart notes sardonically that the "obsolescence" of the tank has been proclaimed many times in the past...
...He presents impressive suggestions for greatly strengthening NATO...
...These are designed for battlefield use only, where their purposely limited range of effectiveness would confine their destructive power to local military objectives...
...See things through his eyes...
...With better understanding than a great many policy makers and with a wealth of evidence to support his views, Hart insists that for these two purposes no single weapon is sufficient...
...Specifically he points out that simply because the H-bomb exists it is patently necessary to possess it in adequate quantity to let it serve as a deterrent of enemy H-bomb aggression...
...The soldier, to be sure, must have a grasp of grand strategy because he is the servant of government, and likewise the statesman must understand many aspects of war if he is to order it intelligently or to fend it off...
...But the greatest contribution by this distinguished British analyst now, as in earlier books, is toward basic thinking on military policy, and particularly toward that of the statesman as well as that of the warrior...
...Mobility is the aim of U.S...
...The book is rich in advanced thinking on military matters, presenting many new ideas, and also defending sound old ideas which are threatened by the "modern warfare" prophets' excesses...
...His aim is for "a mechanized David instead of a Goliath...
...in fact they not only made it difficult but impossible...
...Army planners as well, in tanks and in every other item...
...Of this there is no doubt...
...They will find in Hart's book warm support for their efforts, and also for other far-reaching reforms—for equipment for night-fighting and many other applications of electronic capabilities...
...National security aims at a deterrence of war...
...He strongly questions, too, the wisdom of reliance upon the new, so-called "tactical" or low-yield atomic weapons which American technology has developed...
...Reviewed by Mark S. Watson Military correspondent, Baltimore "Sun" THE TRAINED WARRIOR is expected to excel in field strategy, but at the higher level of grand strategy which looks toward the peace that is to follow war (or, more hopefully, toward averting war altogether) a nation's hope, and the world's, rests rather in superior statesmanship...
...But just as clearly he points out that it is no deterrent of enemy aggression through other means—and it may indeed (as U.S...
...They were designed as an "equalizer" against Communism's vast manpower and they so served for a period...
...Avoid "THE STRONG EFFECT of Roosevell's personality, his utterly pragmatic manner of government, his dislike of all theory, his cheerful and unconquerable optimism, his shallowness of mind and most of all the fact that his entire mental equipment and his Weltanschauung stemmed from the period of the first world war and thus from the pre-totalitarian age — all these qualities made it difficult for him to understand the Soviet problem...
...He lists the qualities of future tanks which should make that vehicle as potent in new warfare as in old—lightness, speed, mobility, altered gun mount, etc...
...Keep strong...
Vol. 44 • October 1960 • No. 41
