And this guy teaches at the Naval War College
I still regret not listening to Cordelia when he conned a whole bunch of his friends into taking one of his ROTC strategy classes: I bet it would've been more interesting than Investments or whatever I took instead.
The Teaching Company's Masters of War sounded so awesome for me, Jon offered to buy it if I lacked shinies: instead, it is the most disappointing lecture series I've finished. It:
Despite this, I think my three biggest takeaways from the series were:
I had this idea that I'd read through all the lecture notes (something I rarely have to do with TTC lectures) and write a snappy one-liner about each master of war, as a way of making sure I got the maximum education about the guys I'd never heard of and never had to consult the lecture notes again.
Thucydides: Ending a war is at least as hard as starting one and when you choose to do so can determine the "victor".
Sun Tzu: Professional soldiers train for war, attack their enemy's strategy and alliances before their armies or cities, using deception and surprise as necessary.
Machiavelli: You go to war with the political institutions you have, so make sure they are good (republican/balanced) ones.
Napoleon: It's good to inherit seize a large, experienced army when your opponents have raw conscripts.
Jomini: If the warlord of the age to whom you're sucking up happens to be a "god of war", you'll be a bestseller.
Clauswitz's formula is: when your political objectives require a war, figure out your objective and move with alacrity against your enemy's center(s) of gravity until either the culminating point of victory (the last point where you have an advantage) or the costs outweigh your objective, whichever comes first.
Mahan: Countries that wish to be sea powers must have the right institutions in addition to coastline so they can build big fleets. Counties that wish to be THE sea power must control the trade choke points. Too bad the US didn't have the will in his days.
Corbett: Naval power is a manifestation of commercial activity.
I re-listened to the Jomini vs. Clauswitz lecture and re-read the lecture notes on sea power multiple times and I still can't tell you the difference between Jomini and Clauswitz or Mahan and Corbett. *sighs* There were three masters mentioned in the air power lecture and I can tell you they were British, Italian, and American, but that's almost all I remember. This is not an effective use of my limited active listening time.
Schelling: Convince the other side you're a belligerent cowboy with a shaky finger on The Button.
Mao Use insurgent tactics to lure the government into overextending itself; consolidate your control over the population with a legitimate government; and then start fighting like an army. If that doesn't work, hope for foreign invaders and terrorize the populace.
Galula Insurgents are fighting for people, not territory.
Trinquier: Insurgencies are wars requiring the military to use all the means at its disposal, including torture, forced resettlement, and racial profiling. Sometimes winning the war doesn't mean political victory though.
I'd never heard of Trinquier before, so I guess that's something. In this 24 lecture series, Prof. Wilson separated insurgency, counterinsurgency, terrorism, and counterterrorism into 4 separate lectures. I really liked the terrorism lecture, until I realized the only master he mentions is Michael Collins. Collins sounds very interesting - the eponymous movie is very high on my queue right now due to his recommendation - but he did not formulate the theory that is described in the lecture and notes (that terrorism is theater with 5 audiences: the incumbent government, constituent and non constituent populations, members of the organization, and international public opinion). Neither did Wilson. I got really, really annoyed when I was working on my one liners and realized that he mentions the colleague who came up with the theory only briefly in the lectures.
The last lecture was about "strategic adaptation" and ended up being the lecture I was looking for. Wilson finally talks about a successful general and what the masters of war would have advised him. THIS was what I had been expecting all along: a series of lectures about great military thinkers and then a series of lectures about how their theories played out in actual wars. I got very excited that the case study in the lecture was George Washington and that his big strategic adaptation was after the disastrous New York campaign. Then I read the Amazon reviews for the books he recommended and realized he'd chosen very incomplete or poor books on Washington. (Apparently James McPherson's book on this topic is not very original, alas.) His bibliography turned out to be half articles from Makers of Modern Strategy, which I already had on my shelf. Start to finish, this lecture series was very little new material, presented as confusingly as possible, by someone I'm horrified to discover is teaching our soldiers. augh.
The Teaching Company's Masters of War sounded so awesome for me, Jon offered to buy it if I lacked shinies: instead, it is the most disappointing lecture series I've finished. It:
- was uncritical;
- does not discuss which master of war you read for what type of situation;
- doesn't reduce issues to what's most important (which I find funny since I learned that from reading about Clauswitz);
- was taught in a way that was not conducive to remembering anything from the series;
- devoted an entire lecture to "just war" (which is not a master of war last I checked); and
- was ultimately more about civilian oversight (the lecturer's particular interest) than masters of war, with only the last two lectures offering theories about what particular masters would say about a situation.
Despite this, I think my three biggest takeaways from the series were:
- Strategic theory is written by losers, bc winners are too busy running the new territory: even Mao was at a career low when he wrote his book.
- Political institutions determine success in war, as George Friedman explained, subject to fog, friction, and chance.
- Knowing how to end a war is the key to winning. (which led to some very interesting conversations about Gulf War 2 with Jon)
I had this idea that I'd read through all the lecture notes (something I rarely have to do with TTC lectures) and write a snappy one-liner about each master of war, as a way of making sure I got the maximum education about the guys I'd never heard of and never had to consult the lecture notes again.
Thucydides: Ending a war is at least as hard as starting one and when you choose to do so can determine the "victor".
Sun Tzu: Professional soldiers train for war, attack their enemy's strategy and alliances before their armies or cities, using deception and surprise as necessary.
Machiavelli: You go to war with the political institutions you have, so make sure they are good (republican/balanced) ones.
Napoleon: It's good to inherit seize a large, experienced army when your opponents have raw conscripts.
Jomini: If the warlord of the age to whom you're sucking up happens to be a "god of war", you'll be a bestseller.
Clauswitz's formula is: when your political objectives require a war, figure out your objective and move with alacrity against your enemy's center(s) of gravity until either the culminating point of victory (the last point where you have an advantage) or the costs outweigh your objective, whichever comes first.
Mahan: Countries that wish to be sea powers must have the right institutions in addition to coastline so they can build big fleets. Counties that wish to be THE sea power must control the trade choke points. Too bad the US didn't have the will in his days.
Corbett: Naval power is a manifestation of commercial activity.
I re-listened to the Jomini vs. Clauswitz lecture and re-read the lecture notes on sea power multiple times and I still can't tell you the difference between Jomini and Clauswitz or Mahan and Corbett. *sighs* There were three masters mentioned in the air power lecture and I can tell you they were British, Italian, and American, but that's almost all I remember. This is not an effective use of my limited active listening time.
Schelling: Convince the other side you're a belligerent cowboy with a shaky finger on The Button.
Mao Use insurgent tactics to lure the government into overextending itself; consolidate your control over the population with a legitimate government; and then start fighting like an army. If that doesn't work, hope for foreign invaders and terrorize the populace.
Galula Insurgents are fighting for people, not territory.
Trinquier: Insurgencies are wars requiring the military to use all the means at its disposal, including torture, forced resettlement, and racial profiling. Sometimes winning the war doesn't mean political victory though.
I'd never heard of Trinquier before, so I guess that's something. In this 24 lecture series, Prof. Wilson separated insurgency, counterinsurgency, terrorism, and counterterrorism into 4 separate lectures. I really liked the terrorism lecture, until I realized the only master he mentions is Michael Collins. Collins sounds very interesting - the eponymous movie is very high on my queue right now due to his recommendation - but he did not formulate the theory that is described in the lecture and notes (that terrorism is theater with 5 audiences: the incumbent government, constituent and non constituent populations, members of the organization, and international public opinion). Neither did Wilson. I got really, really annoyed when I was working on my one liners and realized that he mentions the colleague who came up with the theory only briefly in the lectures.
The last lecture was about "strategic adaptation" and ended up being the lecture I was looking for. Wilson finally talks about a successful general and what the masters of war would have advised him. THIS was what I had been expecting all along: a series of lectures about great military thinkers and then a series of lectures about how their theories played out in actual wars. I got very excited that the case study in the lecture was George Washington and that his big strategic adaptation was after the disastrous New York campaign. Then I read the Amazon reviews for the books he recommended and realized he'd chosen very incomplete or poor books on Washington. (Apparently James McPherson's book on this topic is not very original, alas.) His bibliography turned out to be half articles from Makers of Modern Strategy, which I already had on my shelf. Start to finish, this lecture series was very little new material, presented as confusingly as possible, by someone I'm horrified to discover is teaching our soldiers. augh.