The term ‘manoeuvre warfare’ has become a mantra. Its original meaning is the movement of forces on the ground into advantageous positions which facilitate the destruction of the enemy or may of themselves induce the enemy to surrender. In recent years this has been extended to include surprise, deception, and being able to act faster than the enemy can respond, to the point where it has embraced the ‘indirect approach’. At the start of the 21st century the US and British armies are committed to ‘the manoeuvrist approach’, which appears to mean all things good, as opposed to attrition, which means all things bad. However, a serious study of military history reveals that, like attack and defence, manoeuvre and attrition are always interlocked in a form of creative tension rather than the absolute polarity sometimes identified. Manoeuvre is of value—maybe decisive value—because it increases the ability, actual or potential, to inflict attrition. Conversely, attrition may be necessary to restore manoeuvre. Manoeuvre warfare derives essentially from the practice of land operations. At sea and, above all, in the air, the manoeuvre-attrition polarity is more apparent.
Sun-tzu wrote that the acme of skill in war was to subdue the enemy without fighting. That is the manoeuvrist approach in its purest form: it may be likened to checkmating an opponent's king in chess. Some have gone so far as to assert that there are two opposed and mutually exclusive schools of thought: ‘manoeuvre theory’ and ‘attrition theory’. That is wrong. War is an act of force, ultimately manifested in the ability to destroy or immobilize the enemy's forces and render them incapable of effective resistance. That is attrition. Manoeuvre means moving one's forces in such a way as to multiply their effectiveness and ability to inflict attrition. Mobility is the ability of a force to move, not only in terms of whether it is on feet, hooves, wheels, tracks, wings, or rotors, but in terms of how much fuel it has, the condition of the roads, soil, and so on. Manoeuvre is moving so as to gain an advantage over the enemy, whether getting into a better firing position, or getting astride his communications, perhaps forcing him to attack in unfavourable circumstances. But manoeuvre without the ability to strike is an illusion. As Alfred Thayer Mahan (1840-1914), the greatest US strategist, said in his Lessons of the War with Spain, ‘force does not exist for mobility but mobility for force. It is of no use to get there first unless, when the enemy arrives, you have the most men—the greater force’.
Sun-tzu encapsulated the idea of manoeuvre as being similar to water: avoiding heights and hastening to the lowlands. That is what a manoeuvrist commander does, avoiding strength and striking weakness, but the power of water is nonetheless overwhelming. The Mongols may have imbibed ideas about manoeuvre warfare from captive Chinese, but it is more likely they did it by instinct. Mongol armies were not only highly mobile, they also manoeuvred, avoiding cities, leaving them like so many uncracked nuts to be returned to later. They also moved so fast that their victims vastly overrated their numbers, leading to tales of vast Mongol ‘hordes’. In fact, they were usually numerically inferior to their opponents.
The relation between manoeuvre and attrition mirrors that between the notions of attack and defence. As Clausewitz pointed out, the latter notions are unstable states: the defender is actually well placed to surprise the attacker by counter-attacks.
Throughout military history, the most favoured manoeuvre has been envelopment. A force deployed to fight in one direction is always more vulnerable when attacked from the side. The overlapping or outflanking movement can be taken further, to reach the enemy rear. It is then called an envelopment. A variant of the envelopment was perfected by Frederick ‘the Great’, the so-called ‘oblique attack’. Frederick's superbly drilled army was able to execute such a movement faster than his opponents could respond.
Envelopment has four cardinal advantages. First, there is the surprise factor of appearing behind the enemy: this is both psychological and practical, in that he will have to redeploy to deal with the new threat. Second, his reinforcements and supplies are cut off. Third, his retreat is cut off and, fourth, one's own movement in the desired direction is accomplished more economically because one has gone round the enemy rather than had to fight through him.
If the enemy is enveloped from both sides, it is called a ‘double envelopment’ or, more popularly, a ‘pincer movement’, for obvious reasons. The archetype of this movement is Hannibal's victory at Cannae in 216 bc. The great warrior nation of the Zulus turned double envelopment into a drill (see Zulu war). Their formation was based on the fighting bull buffalo, with horns, head, and loins. The enemy was drawn in to meet the head, which then dispersed to form the horns. The enemy continued towards the loins, but was encircled by the horns, and destroyed. This is what happened to 1, 500 British and native troops at Isandhlwana on 22 January 1879. It can be achieved either by having the wings remain static while the centre falls back (Cannae) or by having the centre stand firm but advancing the wings (Isandhlwana).
If the enemy is completely prevented from withdrawing, he is said to be encircled. This does not necessarily mean completely surrounded: it is merely necessary to cut all practicable routes for retreat and supply. However, when there are other groups of enemy forces around this is not enough, for they may attack and try to break the encirclement. Therefore when executing encirclements an inner front, facing the encircled enemy, and an outer front, to prevent other forces reaching him, need to be established.
The two faces of any encirclement must not be confused with the term double encirclement, which is when one encirclement is followed by or conducted within a wider and deeper one. The classic example here is the battle of Stalingrad, with Operations URANUS, the smaller encirclement, and then LITTLE SATURN, the larger. In this case the encircling forces have not two but four faces: the inner and outer fronts of the inner encirclement, and the inner and outer fronts of the outer one.
An encircled enemy may fight bitterly, and it may be better to encourage him to withdraw. In this case he can be left an escape route, known as a ‘golden bridge’. He may be easier to cut down and destroy as he is withdrawing, than when concentrated in an encircled position.
In the 20th century the term vertical envelopment has come into use, where the enveloping force (or part of it) is delivered by parachute, glider, transport aircraft, or helicopter. The archetypes of this three-dimensional manoeuvre warfare are the German assault on Fort Eben Emael in 1940; the later, albeit sometimes unsuccessful airborne operations of WW II; the Israeli raid on Entebbe in 1976; and the Soviet seizure of Kabul in 1979. Envelopment can also take place by sea, notably MacArthur's landing at Inchon in 1950.
As armies became bigger and the ranges of weapons extended, it was not always possible to envelop the enemy. In WW I, which began with a huge, attempted envelopment—the Schlieffen plan—the armies spread to form a continuous line from the Alps to the sea, partly as a result of their attempts to envelop each other. No WW I general adopted an attrition strategy from choice. Attrition was necessary to restore manoeuvre. Instead of enveloping the enemy, they would have to blast a hole through the continuous line, splitting it in two (the much sought-after breakthrough) and then envelop—outwards. This can be described as an ‘envelopment from within’ or an ‘eccentric movement’. This is the principal form of large-scale modern operations, perfected by the Red Army in WW II and executed successfully as part of the campaign in the Gulf war.
From Cannae, through Stalingrad to Schwarzkopf's 'Hail Mary', the ideal form of manoeuvre has been to attack the enemy from the side or rear, where he is more vulnerable, and to cut him off from supply, reinforcement — and hope. But where conditions do not permit envelopment, attrition has to be used to blast a gap before manoeuvre can be reintroduced. Interior lines can confer advantages, but at some point those advantages may give way to the great disadvantage of being encircled
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The Gulf campaign illustrates the interaction and mutual dependence of manoeuvre and attrition. The air campaign was pure attrition, to the point where Iraqi ground forces were cut to about half their original strength, in terms of numbers of tanks and artillery. The ground campaign embodied all the classic elements of manoeuvre war. The Allies swung west of the main Iraqi forces, some heading for the Republican Guard far behind the front line, others—the British 1st Armoured Division—in a tighter envelopment behind the Iraqi front line. The Allied forces blasted a hole in the Iraqi front line (attrition) through which the 1st Armoured Division was inserted (manoeuvre). Artillery fire and air attack also rained down on the Iraqi forward troops, to prevent them stopping the Allied attack on the wire—attrition to permit manoeuvre. Schwarzkopf summed it up at his final briefing on 27 February 1991: ‘Once we got through this and we're moving, then it's a different war. Then we're fighting our kind of war. Before we get through that, we're fighting their kind of war, and that's what we didn't want to have to do.’ That is what manoeuvre war is all about.
Current US and British military doctrine stresses the ‘manoeuvrist approach’. British Defence Doctrine, published in 1996, defines the manoeuvrist approach to war as ‘one in which shattering the enemy's overall cohesion and will to fight, rather than his matériel, is paramount’. Manoeuvre warfare is invariably joint; it aims to apply strength against identifiable weakness; significant features are momentum and tempo which in combination lead to shock action and surprise. Emphasis is on the defeat and disruption of the enemy—by taking the initiative and applying constant and unacceptable pressure at the times and places the enemy least expects—rather than attempting to seize and hold ground for its own sake. It calls for an attitude of mind in which doing the unexpected and seeking originality is combined with a ruthless determination to succeed. The manoeuvrist approach is equally applicable to all types of military operations. Such an approach offers the prospect of rapid results or of results disproportionately greater than the resources applied. Hence it is attractive to a numerically inferior side, or to a stronger side which wishes to minimize the resources committed. A key characteristic of the manoeuvrist approach is to attack the enemy commander's decision-making process by attempting to get inside his decision-making cycle. This involves presenting him with the need to make decisions at a faster rate than he can cope with, thereby paralysing his capability to react.
Whatever the lip-service paid to the manoeuvrist approach, it is not always practicable to employ it. Measured against the above criteria, the NATO attack on the former Yugoslavia in March-June 1999 appears strongly attritional. The methodical dismantling of the Yugoslav military and to some extent civil infrastructure was pure attrition and did little to achieve the stated aim of protecting Kosovar Albanian refugees. Pres Milosevic of Yugoslavia, on the other hand, proved highly manoeuvrist. Unable to respond effectively to NATO air power, he nevertheless made great capital out of a downed US F-117 Stealth fighter-bomber, aiming for a weak spot—NATO's confidence in its technological superiority. And the moment the bombing started, his troops intensified their attacks on the Kosovar Albanian population—NATO's weakest point. He got inside his enemy's ‘decision-making cycle’ because he could expel refugees faster than NATO could degrade his military forces. NATO troops were not initially committed to a ground offensive, and so Milosevic could not easily attack another vulnerable point—their concern about casualties. However, he managed to capture three US servicemen in Macedonia, striking at ‘the times and places the enemy least expects’.
Manoeuvre warfare is therefore potentially a means of achieving decisive results with minimal casualties. But it is not the exclusive preserve of those who advocate it. And sometimes, as on the western front in WW I or in modern operations, constrained by political and media pressure, there may be no ‘room for manoeuvre’. When that happens, attrition comes into its own.
Bibliography
- Bellamy, Christopher, The Evolution of Modern Land Warfare: Theory and Practice (London, 1990).
- British Defence Doctrine (HMSO, London, 1996)
— Christopher Bellamy
