Defensive Restructuring of the Armed Forces in Southern Africa by Bjørn Møller & Gavin Cawthra

Author:Bjørn Møller & Gavin Cawthra [Møller, Bjørn & Cawthra, Gavin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781138614130
Google: sgnpuQEACAAJ
Goodreads: 40981401
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2018-08-09T00:00:00+00:00

The Offensive and the Defensive Forms of Warfare

There is presently much debate on the changing nature of warfare with particular reference to a new strategic environment, a new era of defence and phenomenal technological developments. But if this were an exhortation, I would probably take my text from Alfred Thayer Mahan’s words “From time to time the superstructure of tactics has to be altered or wholly torn down; but the old foundations of strategy so far remain, as though laid upon a rock”.20

Warfare does not change its nature. It is, and always has been organised violence conducted for political ends; the second objective, that of being political, is critical to the definition because it distinguishes war from crime.21 And also in today’s terms it is not easy to improve upon Carl von Clausewitz’s definition: “War is thus an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will”.22

How do the offensive and defensive forms of warfare relate to each other? Paradoxically, in the “defensive” there are significant elements of the “offensive” and in the “offensive” there are significant elements of the “defensive”. According to Clausewitz, the defensive form of warfare is intrinsically stronger than the offensive despite its negative object. However, he defines a battle as being defensive if one awaits the attack: “...the appearance of the enemy in front of our lines and within range”. He qualifies this further by saying that “...if we are really waging war, we must return the enemy’s blows and these offensive acts come under the heading of defence.... So the defensive form of war is not a simple shield, but a shield made up of well-directed [offensive] blows”.23 As such the offensive and the defensive are intricately interwoven into a seeming contradiction.

Mao Zedong writes in his “Strategy in China’s Revolutionary War” that the primary problem in strategy is how to conserve one’s strength and await an opportunity to defeat the enemy. He saw passive defence (defensive defence) as a spurious kind of defence and active defence as offensive defence or defence through decisive engagements as the only option of any consequence.24 His concept of battle further relates to good intelligence and military capabilities, allowing the commander the position from which he may relate, gauge and regulate his engagement in the battle by integrating the offensive and the defensive.

I submit that these two approaches described above relate to the “primarily defensive posture” espoused by the White Paper where an operationally effective and efficient use of offensive actions underpins the strategically defensive posture. Strategically or on the theatre level one may have a defensive posture, but to give credence to that posture one may need a shield made up of the ability to deliver well-directed blows. This ability to deliver well-directed blows is the chief means which a joint commander may use to influence the outcome of a battle.

A purely defensive response to any form of armed aggression would be very demanding on own forces which could result in high costs for the defender for a relatively modest investment by an adversary.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.