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How We Can Win This War
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.” — Sun Tzu
This sounds facile and more than a little obvious, but if history is any judge, it is anything but. I am enjoying How Great Generals Win by Bevin Alexander (free on Audible), and it is astonishing how shockingly terrible most generals are at their jobs. Somehow the skills and talents that allowed these men to climb the ranks were not the right skills to make rapid and decisive, but relatively obvious strategic calls.
History is chock full of these terrible generals. Bevin Alexander makes a superb case, for example, that Robert E. Lee, however fine a gentleman he may have been, was a dreadful strategist who lost an eminently winnable war – one for which Stonewall Jackson proposed a superb solution that would have won with ease.
What Bevin Alexander does not stress, however, is that a key characteristic that makes great generals is not merely decisiveness and good judgment. He does not emphasize that these great generals were able to understand how their enemies thought. A Mao or Rommel or Caesar or Jackson were not just able to rise above the fallacious assumptions in the standard war doctrine of their age: they excelled in turning around the chessboard and managing to see things from the perspective of their opponents. Lincoln’s obsession with defending Washington DC should have led to the South winning the Civil War. Stonewall Jackson knew it. Hitler’s obsession with never retreating was exploited by Patton and Russian generals time and again. Rommel knew that the British would not commit “infantry” tanks to concentrated tank battles, and he exploited the result of this linguistic stupidity.
I love military history because I am fascinated by being able to see the big picture – the perspective that most people simply fail to achieve because they cannot critically examine their own assumptions. In my own life and business, the failure of so-called “experts” to see that bigger picture has allowed my team to drive a powerful wedge into the resulting opportunity. This different perspective is how Jews managed to make a living through thousands of years as strangers in a strange land: we see things differently and find the gaps.
There are many lessons to learn from military history that can be directly applied to the arena of business: Confuse the enemy. Strike where the enemy is not. Keep them occupied and attentive in the wrong place, while you flank or encircle them elsewhere. Always refuse direct conflict unless it is on your terms.
But you cannot do any of these things well unless you can understand how the enemy thinks. The goal of war is not to destroy the enemy, but to destroy their strategy, to undermine their confidence and will to fight. The army becomes merely ancillary to the underlying will of the enemy. But your victory depends on seeing things their way, and then turning it on its head.
The Torah tells us to “Love your neighbor as yourself.” This so-called Golden Rule is different from the variations found in other traditions: “Do unto others…” or “Don’t do unto others…” And “Love your neighbor” is different because instead of starting with your own perspective in a “Do” or “Don’t Do” commandment, love requires us to need to understand what another person actually needs. It requires us to see things from their perspective. In order to engage neighbors or enemies, we need to know what makes the other guy tick.
This is not easy. We all emphasize different data, accept different assumptions. Every person has, ultimately a unique language, which is why even old married couples misunderstand each other. The gaps between people are pretty huge, and those gaps can be exploited by the few, great people who are able to both understand themselves and understand their opponents.
In politics, we ignore the need for clever strategy at our peril. When we know (as we do) that the angels march with us, it is very easy to assume that other people just need to see the phalanx, and they will fall in line. But invariably, as we see in the culture and political war that we are losing, this is not the case.
Offered battle on Liberal Terms, our side invariably accepts, and is predictably crushed on the battlefield. We lost on gay marriage, on transgender and pronoun issues, on Covid lockdowns. All because most of us are not able to understand how liberals think, and how we can defeat them by flanking maneuvers. Here are some examples of what we could be doing now:
They want to Defund the Police? Their goal is to paint conservatives as defenders of brutality and police racism. But we can win this quite easily: announce that since safety is the Most Important Thing, we can accept defunding the police as long as all black property owners are issued firearms.
The other side would scream. And we then ask them: isn’t it racist to suggest that black people should not be able to defend themselves and their loved ones? The battle wins itself as long as we stay on message, and attack with that flanking “racist!” charge. It is their Achilles heel.
The companion to this is gun rights. My local gun club is mostly patronized by blacks. We should not only encourage it: we should trumpet it and make black gun owners the poster children of the Second Amendment. Publicize their stories about why they armed up and how it positively changed their lives. Such a concerted attack would make the heads of liberals explode.
We could look at Climate Change. We have to first understand that the Left does not care about Climate or the Environment except inasmuch as the buzzwords gain them political points and friends. Climate Change is a way to grab more power for government, more cushy jobs for their friends.
And we keep losing when we point out that the earth is not really warming much, that the data does not support their claims, or that their models are laughably wrong. When we do that, we are fighting the liberal army, not their strategy. We will keep losing, as we have been for years. In order to defeat their strategy, we must be bold and totally alter the battlefield.
So instead of being on the defensive on liberal turf, we need to redefine the battle. Here is a simple slogan: “CO2 is Plant Food!” Put it on billboards, along with images of all the greening that has happened since CO2 levels started rising in the 20th century.
It is factual. And by arguing that we need MORE CO2 emissions “for the sake of the planet” and not less, we put the other side in a very uncomfortable position. Press the attack until they break. For we who love solar-powered plants and animals (who rely on them to survive) are the TRUE guardians of the Planet. “Anyone who hates CO2 emissions hates the Earth.” Preach it.
I, of course, welcome improvements or suggestions and other ways in which we, the generals of the conservative movement in the United States, can defeat the strategy of the enemy.
Published in General
We do not support “tax cuts for the rich”. We want YOU to keep more of your hard-earned paycheck.
Your first sentence accepts the liberal battlefield. We must flank. Remember that the “Bridge to Nowhere” got traction and helped put Congressional Pork on the defensive.
Here is another way to do it:
Who should spend your money?
The Idiots who paid for [example of pork] with your wages?
Keep Your Money in Your Pocket: Lower Taxes
Decisiveness can be crucial, as can insight into the actions and reactions of the opponent, but William Tecumseh Sherman who was no slouch in either of those two facets, recognized a third.
Maintain your perspective and press on to your objective.
I think you are right about your propositions. They’ll face uproar, outrage, and that which some of our putative leaders cannot countenance – mean tweets. Press on. Do not falter. The Left may be Woke, but a greater awakening is occuring as they realize that their ideas just don’t work.
Deregulate so the big corporations will stop abusing the little guy.
I care too much about the poor to vote for a socialist.
Democrats don’t want Muslims in America to have religious liberty.
Democrats banned health insurance.
Grant was a terrible general – he almost turned a win into a loss. Sherman, on the other hand, was brilliant. He did precisely what Jackson proposed doing to the North – but was barred by Lee.
No. The Vicksburg campaign was brilliant – a masterpiece. Sherman told Grant when it was over that he felt at the beginning of it that Grant was putting his army into a position that the Confederacy would have gladly spent a year maneuvering him into, and yet it worked to perfection. It was the Vicksburg campaign that gave Sherman the idea for the March to the Sea, which reproduced it on a larger scale.
The Overland Campaign threw away lives – strategically imbecilic. Lee just happened to be worse. But as countless good leaders have shown over the ages, these kinds of heavy losses are not necessary, especially not when a general has all the advantages Grant had against Lee after Gettysburg.
Stop Democrat efforts to disenfranchise voters: Secure the vote.
Black lives matter: Defund Planned Parenthood, and fund the Police Dept.
I think we have to start asking Democrat politicians and all the woke “Why do you hate black people?” Let them be on the defensive for once.
Yes!
Grant had to keep Lee from being able to reinforce Johnston against Sherman. Threatening Richmond guaranteed that Lee would stay put. Johnston was replaced for not being more aggressive with the troops he didn’t have. Hood was a knucklehead. Sherman took Atlanta in time for the election.
Okay. I’ll bite. What was Stonewall Jackson’s brilliant advice that was ignored?
I think you are a little one dimensional. Mao was successful because he was a brutal man willing to kill any number of his followers in a communist cult of personality and terror.
Lee had flaws, but that did not make him incompetent. In hindsight we see that Antietam and Gettysburg were mistakes in that the north was not going to either rally to his side or shrink in apathy for fighting. Jackson alone would likely have been a disaster because he was such an odd duck. Jackson need Lee and Lee needed Jackson. But Jackson was more in need of his counterpart.
I’m still flummoxed at anyone outside of communist China saying Mao was a great military commander.
Sherman benefitted from the brilliance of George Thomas, and spent the post war years promoting himself and Grant at Thomas’ expense. A pity Thomas died so soon. Sherman’s was another feeble mind who monomaniacally was willing to destroy everything he could. This isn’t wrong, but it was hardly brilliance.
The North kept its army defending Washington, DC because Lincoln was paranoid about DC. There was no defense whatsoever had the South merely chosen to take Philadelphia or Baltimore., living off the fat of the North.
The South could have trivially done to the North precisely what Sherman did to the South. It would have easily persuaded the citizens of the North that the war was not worth pursuing further, and there would have been a negotiated peace.
This option was open up to the moment Lee foolishly attacked a defensive position at Gettysburg. Even the day before Lee could have swung due north and taken Philly, threatening the entire Northern heartland. Jackosn advocated for it, repeatedly, but was ignored.
Not quite. Mao as a strategist was brilliant because he understood how to make a tiny guerilla force highly effective against a conventional standing army.
There were mistakes for countless reasons. 6 of 7 attacks on defended positions in the Civil War failed. So why did Lee keep doing it? Lee had no reason to attack at all. He fixated on where the army WAS. A good general attacks where the enemy is weak, not where they are strong. Idiot.
Then pay more attention to the campaigns in the early 1930s where Mao’s forces, though outnumbered and outgunned by an astonishing margin, survived and thrived.
I love this post, iWe.
Effective persuasion should involve both emotional and logical levels. There’s a great example in ‘The Farm by Lough Gur,” a book about a family in Ireland in the mid-180s.
One young daughter, Bessie, was strongly drawn to the Irish revolutionary cause, and the parents became concerned that her hatred for the English was becoming extreme…whether their concern was motivated by practical fears that she would get herself in trouble, or more because they feared the toxic effect on her soul, is not clear. Their persuasion strategy had two parts:
–Her mother read her a story about an impoverished city child, a chimney sweep, which brought Bessie to tears…after which, the mother gently pointed out that the child was *English*.
–Uncle Richard, who was a priest, took a more left-brain, practical approach. He asked Bessie to describe the independent Ireland of her dreams…which was as utopian as you might imagine…and then asked her how she proposed to pay for all this, pointing out that the English would ‘probably deny themselves that pleasure.’
It’s not a bad model.
Great post iWe. As a Navy guy not about to get into a debate about Army Generals although I do love WWII history and Mark Clark sure screwed up in Italy. But the flanking idea is golden. My idea is billboards in all major cities with the cop camera of the shooting in Columbus. Circle the fast ass with the knife on the left with the note “This Black Live Matters.” Then circle the girl in pink with the tiny dog “This one does not.”
I’m a bit of a Civil War buff. I think that your criticisms of Grant are unwarranted, and that the suggestion that Stonewall Jackson could have easily defeated the North is without merit.
If you’re going to use a war analogy, your argument will fail if your analysis of the war in question is incorrect.
On the main point about Grant: winning a war through attrition is not “strategically imbecilic.” It was effective for Grant, and has been effective in other circumstances, including the Western Front in WWI. It is a strategy that involves heavy casualties. Sometimes the alternative is losing.
(iWe, I apologize. I really didn’t mean to hijack your post.)
No. I think you want it as a question. Circle just the girl in pink. The caption should be: “Does this black life matter ?”
So what Grant did and what Sherman did was an effective combination.
Yeah. After Gettysburg, Lee was able to detach Longstreet to reinforce Bragg. Longstreet’s attack at Chickamauga almost destroyed Burnside’s army. It would have destroyed Burnside’s army, except Thomas was where he needed to be when he needed to be there and he was good enough to earn the name the Rock of Chickamauga. Grant didn’t want Lee to be able to use his central position to shift forces like that again.
Thomas was largely unsung, and it isn’t fair. I personally think that Grant and Sherman had it in for Thomas because he was under Don Carlos Buell in the Army of Ohio at Shiloh. Buell showed up for the second day of fighting at Shiloh, wouldn’t take orders from Grant, and swanned about after the battle acting like he’d won it all by himself. Thomas was in command of the rear of Buell’s column and didn’t get to the battlefield until after the shooting had stopped. For that, he got the reputation with Grant and Sherman of being slow. It wasn’t his fault.
Sherman sent Thomas back to Tennessee to keep Hood out when Sherman struck out across Georgia. He sent him with some of the troops that Sherman had decided not to take along. These troops were missing a few accouterments – cavalry without horses, stuff like that. Grant kept commanding Thomas to attack Hood when Hood and the Army of Tennessee approached Nashville. Grant finally got fed up and sent a replacement commander to take over. The replacement was still en route when Thomas attacked. Hood’s army had ceased to exist as an effective fighting force by the time the replacement caught up.
I strongly recommend this short speech by the author. I think he is right on the money that Stonewall had a great path forward.
An excerpt…
Jackson tried to get Lee to station the Confederate army … where it would threaten Washington in one direction, Baltimore in another, and Philadelphia in a third. Lincoln was certain to insist on keeping the Union army between the Rebels and Washington, so both Baltimore and Philadelphia would be vulnerable. But Lee refused.
…
Therefore, the ideas of Stonewall Jackson were the only means available to the South to achieve victory. He saw at least as early as the Shenandoah Valley campaign that he could easily outmaneuver the Union forces, and could defeat in detail isolated portions of these forces. Jackson sought to exploit this advantage by striking into the North. He was confident he could sever the railroad line supplying Washington with food, and therefore force Lincoln’s government to evacuate the city. He also was certain he could force the Northerners to give up the war by stopping their commerce, and threatening their factories and farms. But he could not induce Jefferson Davis or Robert E. Lee to authorize such a strike.
…
Jackson realized during the Second Manassas campaign that Lee was not going to undertake the sort of wide-ranging maneuver warfare Jackson had conducted so successfully in the Valley campaign. Jackson, therefore, worked out another way to win. … Jackson realized—… that any force solidly emplaced on the defensive could stop almost any frontal attack. He surely drew this conclusion from the disastrous effects of the Seven Days, when only one of four Southern assaults succeeded. The one that did succeed was .. came only after frightful casualties. …
Therefore, Jackson conceived a new method of battle. He saw that the Confederates should not attack themselves, but should induce the enemy to attack. Any attack would be almost bound to fail. Then the Confederates could move around the flank of the demoralized enemy army and force it to retreat or to surrender. This was precisely the situation he set up at Groveton at the battle of Second Manassas. He induced Pope to attack, knowing he would be defeated. He assumed that Lee would quickly swing … [Lee did not]
Lee continued his fatal insistence on frontal assaults almost to the last. He did not accept the “defend, then attack” tactical method that Jackson had devised to avoid attacks himself and let the enemy attack and be defeated. Lee’s inability to see the opportunities that Jackson presented to him is the real story of the Civil War.
Are you serious? The Western Front was a complete and utter disaster!!! There were ways to defeat trenches – and frontal attritive strikes were the single worst way to do it!
The Canadians managed it in WWI, Allenby managed it in Palestine, and the Russians destroyed the German trenches in WWII. The techniques merely required a modicum of strategic insight.
I have to say that you are the first person I have ever met who has defended trench warfare. I know many people who mistakenly think it was inevitable, but nobody who ever thought it “effective.”
What do you think would have happened had Lee tried to take Philly? We already know that northerners took great umbrage at being invaded in Sharpsburg and Gettysburg. All the advantages the Army of Northern Virginia had operating in their own home would have been lost and those advantages would have been gained by the Union. Spies would have been everywhere. Lee would have struggled everywhere he went.
It would have been disastrous had he tried Philly.
If Lee could have improved his strategy at all, it would have been best to not go into Pennsylvania ever, save that army for fighting a war of attrition against the Union. But people have been re-strategizing that war since 1861. Lee was not a buffoon. He was brilliant at maneuvering and having units meet at the right place and time. He was good with defensive positions. His strategy might have been somewhat improved, but in the end, the Confederacy was going to lose unless the Union quit the war. Invading the Union was the wrong strategy by a long shot.
You guys just let me know when you need me to pitch in, ok? I’m here to help just as soon as you need some metaphysics in this conversation, or a responsible interpretation of Plato or William James or something like that.
I completely agree. I’ve never understood why this kind of low hanging fruit is just left to drop to the ground.
Maybe some sort of free resource that provides slogans, one-liners, re-sharable social media posts, short videos that throw jujitsu moves on the topic (We’re pro science, and biology is science…). I think Prager University is good, but this would be a bit different.
Maybe “The Public Arsenal”?
Yes, I’m serious. One of the big problems with people’s view of history, in my opinion, is a Monday-morning-quarterbacking view that claims that everything was really easy and obvious, and if only I had been in charge, I would have won the war promptly with minimal casualties.
The Russians didn’t face much trench warfare on the Eastern Front in WWI. Also, you might notice that the Russians lost WWI.
Palestine was a small and largely irrelevant front, nothing like the Western Front.
I’m not sure what you’re referring to re the Canadians. According to this Wikipedia entry, the Canadian Corps of about 100,000 men fought bravely and well during the final “Hundred Days” offensive in 2018, but suffered about 45,000 casualties. This is hardly an example of avoiding attrition.
The attrition strategy adopted on the Western Front was ultimately effective. The Western Allies won the war, after grinding down the German army. I’ve never seen any persuasive argument for an alternative strategy that would have defeated the Germans on the Western Front. I am a bit of a WWI buff, too (and WWII).
The Russians used an attrition strategy successfully in WWII. The cost was high, but it worked.
I’ve been influenced recently in my thinking about WWI by Michael Neiberg, who is currently the Chair of War Studies and Professor of History at the US Army War College. He’s an engaging speaker, and has several good lectures available on YouTube. He argues, persuasively in my view, against several of the popular and traditional WWI themes, including the “MAIN” explanation for the outbreak of the war (Militarism, Alliances, Imperialism, Nationalism); the alleged foolishness of the generals for the Western Allies (except one terrible Italian general); the importance of the assassination of Franz Ferdinand (which nobody really cared about) as a trigger for the war; and the blame traditionally assigned to Germany (which actually acted in self-defense after Russian mobilization).