- roberturquhart37
- Feb 28
- 9 min read
Dear Friends, Strategy
for Amelia
Strategy and tactics are the general terms used to distinguish between types of military operation. The meaning of tactics is etymologically straightforward (from Latin, tactus, present participle of tango, to touch). Tactics concern units that are directly in touch with the enemy (hence the expression “it takes two to tango”).
Strategy is etymologically less clear, maybe you could say it’s what commanders do when they’re commanding. So fit that in with tactics: commanders have to figure out the overall situation within which some units will be directly in touch with the enemy. This fits pretty much every war in which only some units are in a tactical situation. Strategy and tactics are determined by the necessary character of war itself. Mutatis mutandis they are always the same.
For good or ill, this does seem to be true of tactics. At the battle of Kursk (July-August 1943) both the Germans and the Russians were thinking of Hannibal’s tactics at the battle of Cannae (2 August 216 BC); and today both the Russians and the Ukrainians are using tactics from the battle of Kursk (Kursk itself has been drawn into the theater of war). Strategy has changed, however, or it has been narrowed down to just one thing, and this is only for ill, not good. This one thing has always been an element in military strategy, but it has become the one and only thing for one reason, the development of military technology.
Let’s start at the end. Strategy today has the single aim of killing civilians by mass bombing. Urban areas are usually, but by no means always, the primary targets.
How did we get here? War has never spared civilians: Jericho in Canaan, Melos in the Peloponnesian Wars, Magdeburg in the Thirty Years War, on and on. But the destruction of cities and their populations has usually been a means to strategic ends, not the end itself. The Second World War changed that, and it changed it because of a monstruous new weapon of war, the strategic bomber.
Aircraft played a significant but limited role during the First World War. The possibility of bombing enemy territory emerged, and led to a few actions (the zeppelin raids on London, for example). But the main use of aircraft was a tactical one: supporting armies on the battlefield. Support often included targets beyond the battlefield – enemy airfields, roads and railway lines, etc. – but these followed from the battle at hand. Tactical air support was the first priority at the beginning of the Second World War.
Tactical air support required two types of plane (and hybrids): fighters and bombers. Fighters defended against enemy aircraft, and could also engage on the battlefield strafing the enemy, etc. Bombers attacked specific enemy units – artillery positions, ammunition and supply depots, etc. – but they also engaged directly on the battlefield bombing and strafing enemy units. Fighters needed to be fast and maneuverable. But bombers also required speed and maneuverability. That is, tactical bombers had to be limited in size, in range, and in payload.
All the main combatant powers developed formidable tactical bombers and fighters. Two did something more. Even before the outbreak of war, the Americans and the British were developing a new kind of aircraft, the heavy bomber, with four engines, long range, large payload, and its own defenses (the nickname of the B-17, Flying Fortress, captures all this). The new kind of aircraft was designed for a new kind of war, the main agent of which was the Combined Bomber Offensive, begun in 1943, bringing together the heavy bomber fleets of the RAF and the USAAF. The CBO marks the true beginning of strategic bombing in that it was a conscious, coherent, coordinated and comprehensive plan uniting all theaters of war.
Air Chief Marshal Arthur “Bomber” Harris, Commander-in-Chief of the RAF Bomber Command and a principal architect of the Combined Bomber Offensive explained its aim so clearly that his words embrace not only all the horrors unleashed by the CBO but those of every and all strategic bombing campaigns since:
The aim of the Combined Bomber Offensive ... should be unambiguously and publicly stated. That aim is the destruction of German cities, the killing of German workers, and the disruption of civilized life throughout Germany. It should be emphasized that the destruction of houses, public utilities, transport and lives, the creation of a refugee problem on an unprecedented scale, and the breakdown of morale both at home and at the battle fronts by fear of extended and intensified bombing, are accepted and intended aims of our bombing policy. They are not by-products of attempts to hit factories. (October 1943)
Harris’ superiors declined to announce the aim of the offensive “unambiguously and publicly”, but they understood and approved it just as much as he did.
The US Strategic Air Command, founded in 1946, was a direct outgrowth of the Combined Bomber Offensive.
This is its shield:
This is its motto:
Peace is Our Profession
Here are five pictures of the Strategic Air Command practicing its profession in Vietnam:
The Combined Bomber Offensive and its child, the Strategic Air Command, taught the world the true meaning of the word strategy.
The Second World War is the good war so not saying much about the terror bombing of Tokyo, Berlin, Dresden, even Hiroshima and Nagasaki is almost patriotic. The Korean War was largely a ground war and largely forgotten. So Vietnam is the great lesson: “Look on our works ye mighty and despair.” We can rain down death and destruction on you without interruption and forever. We can wipe you from the face of the earth. This our profession, peace will come when you’re all dead.
And they’re right, they can, from 36,000 feet, rain down pain, misery, death and destruction never imagined before. Napalm alone: can you imagine the horror those children faced? I can’t. But also the creeping ecocidal devastation, Agent Orange.
Yes, they can do all this. But it is useless, useless unless pain, misery, death and destruction are their true and only aims.
Since 1945 war has evolved, and largely through technological development. At the limit, the Third World War will barely last half an hour. Well before that, though, war has moved into the air. The Second World War was the fullest development of conventional warfare on land, sea and air, a war of battles between armed forces on land, sea and air – with strategic bombing thrown in. The Korean War largely followed suit.
In Vietnam, though, the American high command seems to have seen the land war, important as it was, as a series of holding actions while the decisive force was the endless flow of bombs – high explosive, napalm, agent orange – disgorged from the B-52s’ bomb bays. The relentless bombing will break the Vietnamese will to fight.
Bomber Harris made the same assumption. Both were wrong. Perhaps the only occasion on which murdering civilians would have worked was the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I say “would have” because the Japanese were already trying to surrender before the bombings. The Americans dropped the bombs – 6 August 1945, 9 August 1945 – for reasons that had nothing to do with the Japanese: the Japanese dead were merely collateral damage in a larger geo-political strategy.
Murdering civilians, destroying entire cities, is not even good strategy. This is important, but must not obscure the real point. MacNamara made a big fuss about apologizing for his role in the Vietnam War. But he apologized for making mistakes. He never admitted that he was an architect of crimes against humanity. That is the only apology worth a damn. But far better never to have engaged in crimes against humanity.
The only proper response to any one of those pictures and a million others is: this is wrong. It must not happen.
But it goes on and on happening. Civilians are still dying in Ukraine and Gaza. The life of cities in Ukraine and Gaza is being destroyed right now. Aleppo is still a ruin.
What has all that destruction, and misery, and pain, and death achieved? Nothing. Nothing other than destruction, and misery, and pain, and death. Oh, and one thing more, renewed, reborn hatred and the desire for revenge.
The destruction of Gaza most vividly demonstrates the meaning of the word strategy: the war on Gaza is the bombing and almost nothing else. But remember, first, no citizen of the United States of America or of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland has any right to condemn the IDF until they first condemn the Combined Bomber Offensive, the Strategic Air Command and show their commitment to the cause of peace, to commanding their governments that they will never again resort to strategy.
Second, for all that strategic bombing is more central to the Israeli war plan, the damage done in Gaza is of a kind with that in Ukraine, in Syria, in Berlin, Tokyo, Dresden. Strategic bombing is all one, with always the same goal – killing civilians. Its results are always the same. Pictures of one ruined city are more or less interchangeable with those of any other, whether caused by bombers or by self-guided missiles.
The Russian bombing of Ukraine has faced worldwide condemnation, rightly. The Israeli bombing of Gaza has been condemned. It has been condemned as genocide, and it is genocide, I think. But many who condemned Russia for the simple murderous brutality of bombing civilians cannot see the destruction of Gaza in the same way.
The atrocities of October 7 stand in the way of full recognition of what has happened to Gaza. Far beyond supporters of the current Israeli government, it is hard to see it for what it truly is: Israel must be allowed to defend itself. How can we not sympathize with this, in the moment, the moment of recognition of the unspeakable horrors of that day.
BUT …
the Russians say that they are defending themselves in Ukraine.
So, right now all citizens of the US and of the UK must stand up here and condemn the terror bombing of Germany and Japan. Nothing that the Nazis did, nothing, justifies the destruction of Dresden and Berlin. The atom bombing of a city is a crime against humanity, and this is so whatever the reasons were, the possible loss of life of American soldiers does not change it. So here is a dictum, possibly even a candidate for Kant’s categorical imperative:
In war, judge your actions always by the worst actions of your enemy
if you cannot say that yours are better then they are condemned.
But who is it who makes such judgements? The political leaders, the High Command. Will they hold to this dictum? No, they won’t. At least they won’t on their own. Because truly living up to it does rather point towards the avoidance of war, and there are many many reasons why the political leaders, the High Command, and the capitalists are quite fond of war.
So then it is up to the people. And the people must teach themselves. They must overcome their fears, resentments and hatreds. They, we, must be able to look at just one picture of a ruined city and say this is wrong, I don’t care where it is or who these people are, it’s wrong and must not happen again. We all, from all classes in the US must admit our privilege: the sound of an aircraft passing over us creates no emotion at all. And then, then, we must teach these lessons to our governments, we must condemn not the governments but ourselves for the actions done in our name, and above all of every human life taken away. We must hold accountable not them, the government, but ourselves.
Early in the Russian invasion of Ukraine, in a make-shift air-raid shelter in Kyiv, a little girl, her name is Amelia, sang a song from Frozen to give just a tiny bit of happiness to those with her in the shelter.
That was almost three long and terrible years ago. An event so small it’s hard even to remember faced with the ever accumulating sum of human misery since.
Even for us, the fortunate – we have many real and terrible fears, but the bombs and missiles are not falling on us – times are hard. This fall (2024), we all felt this, my colleagues, our students. I taught a small graduate student class – five boys, four girls. We were all weighed down by the events of every single day, and I decided that we needed to talk about these, and we spent a lot of class time doing that. But before class working on what I was going to say about the actual subject of the class, I heard them all talking in the class-room down the hall excitement bursting into laughter over and over again. It was wonderful, and I told them so, and we ended up talking about it, because it was obvious – and everyone agreed – that the girls were the ones who kept it all going especially the laughter. So I brought in something I’ve been thinking of for a long time: laughter, people having fun, people being silly, silly songs, silly games. Where does silliness come from? From children. But who really keeps it going? Girls. Very early on boys are taught that they must leave all that but especially silliness behind, the world is stern and earnest and you must go out there into the marketplace and compete compete compete and there’s certainly no room for silliness. “Shades of the prison-house begin to close upon the growing boy.” What oppresses girls and then women also shows the way to liberation. The smallest things, the silliest games may be the only successful weapons against the deathly order of raison d’état, of geo-political strategy, of the imperatives of the “free market”. Both the boys and the girls in the class agreed with all this, expressing it in their own depictions of themselves.
Amelia’s song in the air-raid shelter, so small, so silly, lives. Little girls singing and playing will be our salvation, if we have one.
Love and solidarity,
Bobby