I think this might be last theoretical War Room for a while: these are really hard to cook up. To some extent I'm not that happy with this because it misses a few points and feels pretty shallow... it's hard to know if I'm bouncing off the subject because it's obvious to me in ways that it might not be to others. Guess we'll see!

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War Room 32: Tactical Means

Welcome back to the War Room, where we are onto the third part of our look at the concept of the strategy bridge. This is a model where policy ends are linked to tactical means by strategic decisions. Last time we looked at policy ends, so now we’re going to examine tactical means.

Tactical Means

The easiest way to understand tactical means is to see them as the tools that strategy makers use to achieve policy goals. As an added bonus, that gives us the straightforward analogy of a toolbox.

Our toolbox is full of different tools- different tactical means- that are designed for different tasks and need to be used in different ways. More complex tasks might require the use of several tools simultaneously or in the correct sequence. Some tools can used for multiple tasks to greater or lesser degrees of efficiency, others are very much designed to do one thing and nothing else.

It follows that it’s very important to not only select the right tool for the right job, but to make sure that that tool is available in advance, and that we have a realistic understanding of what it’s capable of and what costs are associated with using it.

Characteristics of the Tactical Level

First though, we need to consider a few characteristics of the tactical level where tactical means are actually employed.

Fractal Detail

Just like with policy, tactical means are nested in our model. To one level of analysis, something like an airstrike is a tactical means in and of itself. But when we focus in on it, not all airstrikes are created equally and the differences matter.

This is a key issue with this end of the policy-strategy-tactics process: we have a fractal detail problem. Every time we zoom in, we discover more details to zoom in on.

For example, let’s consider the Battle of the Atlantic. The Allied policy end is to protect sea lines of communication to Great Britain. The main threat to that is the German Uboat force, so the relevant tactical means is anti-submarine warfare. This involves, amongst other things, organising merchant shipping into convoys; sending hunter-killer groups out to find and sink U-Boats; strategic bombing to disrupt port facilities, fuel supplies and U-Boat construction; radio intercepts, cryptography and wargaming to anticipate and prepare counters to U-Boat activity; and aerial ASW patrols.

If we dive into aerial antisubmarine warfare we need to consider what aircraft are used and how their performance impacts operations; where those aircraft are based and what areas they can patrol; what sensors they’re equipped with to detect U-Boats; what kind of anti-submarine weapons they’re armed with and what countermeasures U-Boats might deploy to evade or mitigate aerial ASW efforts.

Getting deeper, those countermeasures might include diving the instant they spot an aircraft; more distant patrol areas; radio silence; fitting U-Boats with anti-aircraft guns and armour; developing the Schnorkel so that U-Boats can spend more time submerged; researching radar-absorbing tiles to reduce the radar profile of submarine…

These are not exhaustive lists, and we could go much further, but there’s already a massive array of information to process and it all impacts the effectiveness and potential success of the over-arching tactical means. There are endless details and those details matter, but it’s impossible to cover them all.

In practice, this deep pool of detail is the realm of professionals and specialists. Policymakers and strategists are generally not all that interested in the minutiae, they turn to tacticians for options and how those options relate to their goals.

Complex Interactions/Uncertainty

However, the details still exist and it’s important to bear in mind that the tactical level, more than any other, is an environment where complex systems interact in unexpected and unforeseeable ways.

German U-Boats and Destroyers operating in the Norwegian fjords in 1940, for instance, found that they never managed to successfully hit anything with their torpedoes. This turned out to be because their torpedoes had been designed and tested in seawater and the mix of fresh and sea water in the fjords resulted in them running deeper than intended. The Kriegsmarine could have landed multiple hits on HMS Warspite in the third Battle of Narvik, but all their torpedoes ran underneath the battleship and failed to connect.

Uncertainty, chance and friction dominate at the tactical and that means that the employment of tactical means does not always produce the intended results. Obviously that might be because they’re not implemented successfully, or something might have been missed like with some early war WW2 torpedoes, but things can be much more complicated.

For example: if we turn to the 1968 Tet Offensive and look at the Viet Cong attack on the American Embassy in Saigon, we have a massive gulf between the tactical and the strategic. A small party of VC sappers attacked on the night of the 31st of January with the intent of seizing the embassy. They managed to penetrate the embassy compound, but lost both their commander and 2iC in the process. Without further orders, the sappers occupied the grounds instead of storming the embassy building itself, the larger VC force that was supposed to relieve them never arrived and they were mopped in the morning.

In a tactical sense, the attack was a total failure. The VC managed to kill 5 Americans and controlled the Embassy grounds for a few hours before they were all killed or taken prisoner.

The Embassy attack was a microcosm of the Tet Offensive as a whole, which similarly failed to achieve any of its objectives. Viet Cong units entered into open battle with US and ARVN forces where they suffered horrendous casualties and the anticipated popular uprising against the South Vietnamese regime simply did not materialise.

But strategically speaking, it was not just a victory but a decisive one. The American press were not as interested in tactical minutiae as they were in the ability of the Viet Cong to mount an offensive. This dramatically undermined the US government’s insistence that it was winning the war and the Embassy Attack served as a focal point for the reshaping of American public opinion.

From that point onwards, continued involvement in Vietnam became politically poisonous for policy makers back in Washington. They stopped looking for victory and started looking for a way out.

This was not what North Vietnamese decision-makers had in mind when they planned the Tet Offensive: they were focused on how things would pan out in South Vietnam, but nonetheless it more than offset the failure of their original plans.

For the purposes of evaluating tactical means as part of the strategic process, this kind of uncertainty about effects is a greater problem for practitioners than analysts. After the fact, previously unforeseen interactions are on display and we have the opportunity to focus on the relevant threads and pick up the details.

But it’s important to remember that when decisions are being made in the strategic process, it’s not clear what is going to happen.

Effects

So that’s a brief overview of the tactical level as an uncertain environment where fractal detail produces complex interactions. Bearing that in mind, what we’re going to do now is think about tactical means in terms of their effects.

Key to this is the idea that the strategic process is fundamentally competitive. Strategic actors employ tactical means to achieve policy ends, but those policy ends are usually contested by other actors. In this context, tactical means have two basic purposes: to influence opposing actors into accepting policy ends, or neutralising the tactical means of opposing actors so that they can’t resist the imposition of policy ends.

When we think about the use or threat of the use of force, this is pretty straightforward stuff. It’s the cornerstone of the idea of decisive battle. If you destroy your opponent’s army, they can’t stop you doing what you want.

1066 panned out with 3 decisive battles. On the 20th of September, Harald Hardrada smashed a local English force at Fulford, securing the city of York. On the 25th, an English army under Harold Godwinson arrived from the south, crushed Harald Hardrada and restored English control. Then, finally, on the 14th of October Harold attempted to counter the Norman invasion under William the Conqueror in the south and was defeated at Hastings, leading to the imposition Norman control.

We have a succession of strategic actors neutralising their opponent’s tactical means of resistance, ie: defeating their armies, allowing each one in turn to impose their policy ends of political control.

A less direct example can be found in the 1956 Suez Crisis. In short, Britain and France conspired with Israel to invade Egypt in order to regain control of the Suez Canal, which had been nationalised earlier in the year. This ran counter to American policy goals in the early Cold War. President Eisenhower was concerned that American acquiescence in British and French action against Egypt could result in Middle Eastern nations looking to the Soviets for support.

So the Americans exerted financial and political pressure. Britain was already in economic trouble after World War Two: the US threatened to create a full blown economic crisis by denying them access to assistance from the International Monetary fund and devaluing the pound by selling off its sterling bonds.

This stopped the British in their tracks, leading to a ceasefire on the same day as the Anglo-French operation to seize the canal and an eventual withdrawal. In short, the United States influenced the British to abandon their own policy end and align with American policy: they changed the minds of decision-makers in London.

Inflicting Cost-Benefit Choices (or not)

These are pretty simple examples and they highlight the reality that neutralising tactical means and changing policy frequently go hand in hand. In 1066, continuing to resist the imposition of opposing policy ends once your army is gone means that the enemy ravages your lands and you can’t do anything to stop them. Events at the tactical level have changed the cost-benefit calculation of resistance. In a similar vein, in 1956 American threats to the British economy forced London to reconsider whether it was worth trying to regain control of the Suez Canal.

So a key function of tactical means is to force opposing actors to reconsider their positions. This can be very difficult, especially if the tactical means to apply the right kind of pressure are unavailable, inapplicable or not obvious… assuming they exist at all.

To return to Vietnam, for example, the United States deployed a vast array of tactical means as it attempted to prevent North Vietnam from taking control of South Vietnam. American units usually mauled Viet Cong or North Vietnamese Army units when they engaged in battle. American aircraft bombed the Ho Chi Minh Trail and North Vietnam itself.

The US consistently sought to neutralise the tactical means of the North Vietnamese, essentially aiming to inflict enough casualties and do enough damage to force Hanoi to reconsider its position.

Rather famously, this did not work. Nothing the United States did changed the cost-benefit calculations of North Vietnamese decision-makers. They were ideologically committed to reunification, they were willing to suffer to achieve their goal and there was probably nothing the US could do to make them change course.

Costs and Risks

This brings us to another important characteristic of tactical means: they involve costs and risks. The United States did not employ every possible means at its disposal to win the Vietnam War.

The American commitment to Vietnam peaked at 543,000 servicemen in 1969. But the total strength of the American military at that time was over three million. It did not invade North Vietnam. It did not attack North Vietnam’s Soviet and Chinese supporters. It did not use nuclear, biological or chemical weapons. In short, America did not go all in on Vietnam.

And it should be pretty obvious why the United States chose not to use every available option. Strategic actors have to balance multiple, often competing, policy ends.

The US armed forces had more commitments than just Vietnam. Units were needed in Western Europe to deter Soviet aggression, they were deployed in support of US allies around the world, they needed to be held in reserve in the United States and they needed to spend time training and refitting.

American involvement in Vietnam took place in the Cold War context. Washington wanted to pursue its policy aim of preventing the fall of South Vietnam to Communism, but it did not want to escalate the conflict and find itself at war with the Soviet Union or Communist China.

In 1950, the United Nations counter-invasion of North Korea had so threatened the Chinese they entered the Korean War. The American administration did not want a repeat of that in Indochina, not just because China was now a nuclear power, but because an escalation would ultimately force the US itself to increase its commitment and likely suffer greater losses than it already was.

That took a ground invasion of North Vietnam off the table. Deploying nuclear, biological or chemical weapons was seen as similarly provocative- their use would put the Soviets and Chinese in a position where they might feel forced to demonstrate their commitment to their ally- but it also flew in the face of broader American efforts to maintain a taboo on the use of those kinds of weapons.

In other words, when policymakers and strategists are looking for the right tactical means, they need to take into account the wider situation, including how the use of tactical means might impact other policy ends.

This means that good choices in one situation can be bad choices in another, depending on the context, and that the intricacies of specific tactical means can make certain options more or less appealing to different actors.

This brings us back round to the details, because the details matter.

Conclusion

That was a very quick, surface level once over of tactical means in the context of the policy-strategy-tactics model. In a lot of ways, this is the exciting, dynamic part of the process and that in itself can be problematic. It’s easy to get lost in the detail, whether it is relevant or not, but that is at least a problem for strategic decision-makers as well.

Policymakers, strategists and tacticians alike can all find themselves focusing on tactical means in ways that compromise the links between policy and the tactical end. Strategic bombing in World War 2 is a fairly well established example, despite the name; and it’s not hard to think of more recent events where strategic actors have produced what appears to be poor strategy because they were more concerned with killing people and breaking things than finding ways to convert events at the tactical into progress towards policy ends.

That is perhaps another topic to dive into though. For now, we’ve dipped into all three parts of the policy-strategy-tactics model. This has been pretty heavy abstract stuff, so in the next episode of the War Room I think its best we start applying the theory and seeing if it can help us understand some history.

So, hope you all enjoyed this one and found it interesting. If you’d like to watch these videos early and support the channel you can do so via Patreon and Youtube memberships. Whether you do or not, thanks for watching and I’ll catch you in the next one.