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Younghusband
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Younghusband

Date

May 25th, 2008

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The Principles of War: 3. Offensive Action

This post is part of the Principles of War series. See the introductory post or browse all posts with the principles of war tag.

Offensive action is the necessary forerunner of victory; it may be delayed, but until the initiative is seized and the offensive taken victory is impossible.

Comments to this entry

Curzon
May 26, 2008
2:24 am
Interestingly enough, that's a reality that I understood playing Starcraft and similar simulation strategy computer games. No matter how perfect my defense of positions and bases was against all possible avenues of attack, I never made any gains unless I took the offensive intiative.


Two other things I learnt here were:


- No matter how perfect a defense, the enemy has the uncanny tendency to carefully evaluate fortifications and attack where strengths are weakest, often in a way the defender could not even expect.


- Even when a bold offensive appears to be a failure with loss of men and treasure for the attacker, it can inflict such damage that the defender is either too wounded to retalliate, or the next attack easily finishes the job once all the "hard work" is done.


The old adage is true -- the best defense is a good offense.
Joe Jones
May 27, 2008
1:52 am
Starcraft really does drive this point home. While one could theoretically win a battle on defense by wearing their enemy out, it seems almost impossible in practice. If you defend, your enemy will come right up to your home base, and even if you can hold them off forever you will still spend an unjustifiable amount of time and effort in keeping them away from your core. (I'm looking at you, TSA inspectors!) Taking the fight to the enemy, on the other hand, frees up your home base, secures your production backbone and keeps your forces stronger than they would be if they were backed into a corner.
Benjamin Walthrop
May 27, 2008
4:12 pm
This may or may not be true in my opinion. Whether or not this is a principle of war hinges upon the relative strength of the participants. In the current situation, the jihad movement was bound by this principle because of the movement's relative weakness. The United States and other coalition forces are not necessarily bound by this principle because of their relative strength. In other words if a relatively weaker actor decides to stage a war and no one shows up, who has achieved victory?
Younghusband
May 29, 2008
2:01 am
Benjamin, hold on until the sixth principle, Concentration of Force. I think your arguments will be very valid then.
Mark
May 29, 2008
8:50 pm
With today's warfare, when a state starts attacking, that is the beginning of losing for them. Power belongs to the people-who fight back and never give up, because the state always gives up eventually.