The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire by Edward N. Luttwak

Author:Edward N. Luttwak [Luttwak, Edward N.]
Language: eng
Format: azw
ISBN: 9781421419466
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Published: 2016-05-21T16:00:00+00:00

The System in Outline

Faced with an enemy sufficiently mobile and sufficiently strong to pierce a defensive perimeter on any selected vector of penetration, the defense has, in principle, two alternatives: the first, usually described as an “elastic defense,” makes no attempt to defend the original frontal perimeter with its fortifications and associated infrastructures, if any. Instead, the defense relies exclusively on mobile forces, which must be at least as mobile as those of the enemy. The two sides then fight on an equal footing: the defense can be as concentrated as the offense, because it need not assign troops to hold any fixed positions, nor detach forces to protect towns, cities, or specific sectors. On the other hand, the defense thereby sacrifices all the tactical advantages of being on the defensive—except its presumably better knowledge of the terrain1—because neither side can choose its ground, let alone fortify it in advance. As a strategy, an elastic defense is normally a last resort, the result of being unable to defend the perimeter as it was before. Indeed the very term is euphemistic: as one scholar noted, a really elastic defense is virtually no defense at all.2

The second operational method is a defense-in-depth, based on some combination of self-contained strongholds with mobile forces deployed between, ahead, or behind them. Under this method, which has many variants both ancient and modern, warfare is no longer a symmetrical contest between structurally similar forces. While the offense has the advantage of being able to concentrate its forces against any chosen sector of the entire front, thus maximizing its local superiority, the defense has the advantages of mutual support between its self-contained strongholds and of its mobile forces in the field. If the strongholds are sufficiently resilient to survive attack without requiring the direct support of the mobile elements, if the mobile elements in turn can resist or evade concentrated attacks in the field without needing the shelter of the strongholds, and finally, if the offense must defeat the strongholds one by one in order to prevail, then the conditions are present for a successful defense-in-depth, because the offense will eventually be faced by the superior strength of the fixed and mobile elements acting in combination. Before that, indeed all along, the strongholds can resupply the mobile forces and afford them temporary shelter if needed, while the mobile forces can gather to counterattack the enemy forces attempting to defeat any given stronghold.

The terms used above are modern, but defense-in-depth is a strategy with an ancient pedigree. Some reviewers of the first edition of this book did not seem to be aware of this; one even noted in alarmed tones that defense-in-depth was the “usual designation of current NATO doctrine” and that such a strategy “would make no sense without the possibility of rapid and massive reinforcement from overseas, and the threat of nuclear retaliation.”3 Of that there was little danger in the third century CE. In any case, fortresses, their garrisons, and cavalry forces formed defense-in-depth combinations long before then, though not on the strategic scale of the Romans.

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