The Bazaar of War

The Bazaar of War

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Doctrinal Language

Churchill, Maneuver, and the Stickiness of Language
One of the reasons I focus so much on doctrinal language and the origins of military terminology is how strongly it shapes our thinking.
The Paradox of Attrition: Psychological Defeat by Material Means
Military theory has grappled for centuries with how to categorize attritional warfare.
Decisive Battle and Exploitation: The Irreducible Whole of Decision
Overemphasizing the decisiveness of individual battles makes it easy to overlook a key ingredient to any decision: the subsequent exploitation.
Asymmetric Decisiveness: The Unequal Payoff of Decisive Battle
The decisiveness of a battle is best measured by how it affects a war's range of potential outcomes. Yet the prospects of victory are not equal for both…
Against Abstraction: Military Theory and Clarity of Thought
It is difficult to appreciate just how much Western—especially American—military thinking is pervaded with abstraction.
Notes on Annihilation
Perhaps no battle in history has witnessed so complete an annihilation of an army as the Battle of Hattin. Yet it did not result in the total…
Is Strategy Just a Theory of Victory? Notes on an Annoying Buzzword
It has become popular of late to associate strategy with a “theory of victory”.
Attrition and Its Opposites: A Rectification of Names
It is no longer so fashionable to speak of maneuver and attrition as two poles of a spectrum.
The Levels of Warfare, Part 4: Operational Confusion
Operational art has had a troubled existence in the English-speaking world.
The Levels of Warfare, Part 3: Operational Art
As we saw in Part 2, strategy and tactics had acquired more-or-less established meanings by the start of the 19th century.
The Levels of Warfare, Part 2: The Birth of Tactics and Strategy
We left off in part 1 in late antiquity with the Strategikon, which marked a shift in ancient military thought.
The Levels of Warfare, Part 1: The Ancient Legacy
Among the most enduring innovations of 18th-century theory was the division of warfare into the formal levels of tactics and strategy.
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